Moroccan Mother in France Faces Jail Time for Violating Compulsory Education Laws

The court was faced with a case of a defaulting parent. The 39-year-old woman is accused of "refusing to enroll a school-age child in an educational institution, despite a formal notice" and "failure, without legitimate reason, to fulfill the school obligation by a child’s guardian, despite an administrative warning". Absent from the hearing, the mother was sentenced by default to three months in prison with probation and a 950 euro fine, reports Sud ouest.

The Bordeaux Academy sent a letter to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in October 2021 on the situation of two of the six children in this family living in Pessac. One of the little boys is out of school and one of his sisters, enrolled at the François-Mitterrand college, has behaviors that raise questions. She wears the veil at school, remains isolated, is very nervous, often absent and refuses to respect the rules.

The child welfare measure that the justice system tried to implement "could not be achieved, the family being in total opposition, closed in on itself," explains prosecutor Julien Heuty, at the hearing. The mother explained in July to the social services that the little boy now lives in Morocco. "Today, this family has left Pessac," said Me Desmoulins, the representative of the ad hoc administrator appointed for the children.

According to the lawyer, the children "would be between Perpignan and Marseille. We tried to get in touch with them, but we were confronted with a kind of void. I fear that we are arriving too late, that the children could have been placed earlier. They evolve in a very particular family environment, a form of radicality. Over the years, the locks have multiplied".