A French woman accused of suffocating eight of her newborn babies told investigators she feared they were the children of an incestuous relationship with her father.

Dominique Cottrez is on trial charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder of minors. She faces life in prison if found guilty by a jury in the northern city of Douai.



The infanticide case stunned the country when the bodies were discovered in and around her home in 2010.

Cottrez, 51, who has two adult daughters, told investigators that over more than a decade, she carried several babies to term and then killed them. Cottrez’s obesity appeared to hide the pregnancies, which went unnoticed by her husband, children, neighbours, colleagues and even doctors at a nearby hospital.

Dozens of forensic and psychiatric experts, police investigators and witnesses, including her husband, daughters and siblings, are scheduled to testify in the trial, which started on Thursday.

Cottrez told investigators she was raped by her father, first when she was eight and repeatedly through her childhood and teenage years, according to judicial documents. She later entered a long, incestuous relationship with him as an adult, including after she married. She said it became consenting, and she was in love with her father more than with her husband. Her father died in 2007.

One of the first witnesses called to the stand on Thursday was Leonard Meriaux, who bought the Cottrez family house and discovered the first corpse in the garden in 2010. He called police, who found another in the garden and six more in the garage of the house.

Investigators soon turned their suspicions to Cottrez, who quickly confessed. She told the investigating judge that she had never used contraception or had an abortion because of a phobia of doctors. She also said she did not keep the babies because she was afraid that they were the results of her incestuous relations with her father. She said the killing had become a “means of contraception”, according to the judicial documents.

The verdict is expected next Thursday.