Véronique Courjault (née Fièvre; born 1968) is a French woman who confessed to killing three of her newborn children. Two of the infants were found stored in a freezer at her home, a case that drew significant media attention. This case became widely known in the media as the ''"affaire des bébés congelés"'' ("frozen babies case").

The Courjault family

Véronique Courjault (born 1968 in

Maine-et-Loire Maine-et-Loire () is a department in the Loire Valley in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France. It is named after the two rivers, Maine and the Loire. It borders Mayenne and Sarthe to the north, Loire-Atlantique to the west, Indr ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

) is married to engineer Jean-Louis Courjault (born 1966). The couple married in 1994 and had two sons, born in 1995 and 1997. In 2002, the family relocated to

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

, due to Jean-Louis's professional commitments, while maintaining a residence in the French city of

Tours Tours ( ; ) is the largest city in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabita ...

Chronology of events

On 23 July 2006, Jean-Louis Courjault, returning to

after vacationing in

, discovered two infant corpses in the family freezer. A few days later, DNA tests conducted by South Korean authorities confirmed that the infants were those of the Courjaults. On 22 August 2006, Jean-Louis and Véronique Courjault held a press conference during which the couple contested the DNA results. They also accused the media of acting as a "lynch mob" in conspiracy with Jean-Louis’s commercial rivals. The case was transferred to France, where new DNA tests were ordered. On 12 October 2006, Véronique Courjault admitted to killing both infants and freezing their remains after giving birth to them in South Korea in 2002 and 2003. She also confessed to killing a third infant and burning its body in a fireplace in 1999, while the couple still lived in France.Article du Figaro du 9/6/2009
/ref> In January 2009, the case against Jean-Louis Courjault was dismissed. He publicly stated that he had never been aware of his wife’s pregnancies and explained that she had concealed them from him by wearing loose clothing and using a process known as

denial of pregnancy Denial of pregnancy (also called pregnancy denial) is a form of denial exhibited by pregnant women or girls to either the fact or the implications of their own pregnancy. One study found that those who denied their own pregnancy represented 0.26% o ...

. On 18 June 2009, Véronique Courjault was found guilty of murdering her three infants by a French court and was sentenced to eight years in prison. A significant debate emerged in the Francophone press during the summer of 2009, focusing on the basis for Courjault's denial of the pregnancies and whether she had deliberately deceived her husband with the intention of murdering the infants. Swiss television (TSR) in Geneva aired an interview with American child psychiatrist

Daniel Schechter Daniel S. Schechter (born 1962 in Miami, Florida) is an American and Swiss psychiatrist known for his clinical work and research on intergenerational transmission or "communication" of violent trauma and related psychopathology involving parents ...

, a specialist in the diagnosis and treatment of peripartum psychopathology. Schechter described "denial of pregnancy" as a serious symptom of a psychiatric disturbance that can have several possible etiologies. Véronique Courjault was released from jail on 17 May 2010, after serving almost four years behind bars.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Courjault, Veronique 1968 births French female serial killers French murderers of children Living people People from Maine-et-Loire

The Courjault family

Chronology of events

See also

References