The 21-year-old Irish woman accused of killing her newborn baby in southern France on February 12th was questioned for the first time by a judge yesterday.
The hearing was to have taken place at the Palais de Justice in Grasse, but the woman's doctor changed the venue to the Pasteur Hospital in Nice, where she is detained in a special ward for female prisoners.
She suffered massive haemorrhage when giving birth and subsequently received transfusions. Her parents, who moved to Nice to be near her, waited in vain at the courthouse in the hope of showing moral support for her.
The woman's companion, a 35- year-old Irish school teacher, was freed on bail on March 6th. On March 29th, his lawyer filed a request that he be allowed to leave France. Judge Thierry Laurent is expected to hand down a decision by April 8th.
The Irishman's school is understood to have kept his job open for him, but the Department of Education would also have to approve his resuming work.
The Irishman is staying with a Franco-Irish family in a town outside Paris. The fact that the father of the family is a gendarme helped persuade the judge to grant bail.
At the closed hearing yesterday Judge Laurent is believed to have asked the woman whether she maintained her initial statement, after the baby boy was found wrapped in a towel and plastic bag in a hotel corridor.
She said that the Irishman sharing her hotel room was not the infant's father. The judge was also expected to ask about the circumstances of her pregnancy, and her motives in hiding her condition.
"I would ask her a fourth question," the public prosecutor, Mr Raymond Doumas said. "About the conditions of the delivery. That's really the knot of the problem. She claims the baby fell from her height, but the pathologist's report showed no sign of anything like that."
Ms Delphine Girard, a lawyer for the Irishman, expressed optimism that "this case will be wrapped up soon - it's ridiculous for it to drag on."
The pathologist's report was inconclusive, she said, and there was no reason to detain the young woman "who is clearly not a delinquent, who has family to look after her."
Judge Laurent is understood to be leaving on holiday, and the Irish woman's family could wait a long time for further developments.
The results of a DNA test to determine the paternity of the infant and the definitive pathologist's report have not come in yet.
Mr Doumas said French laboratories were "overwhelmed" and that such tests sometimes take four to five months.
He thought it plausible that the Irishman was not the father, and assumed Judge Laurent would want to question the biological father, who is believed to be in Luxembourg.
If Judge Laurent decided to free the Irish woman, Mr Doumas said he would oppose the decision. If his opposition were over-ruled, he would appeal, he added.
