A self-styled ‘monster of a mother’ who starved her own daughter to death after torturing her ‘because she looked like her father’ was today sent to prison for life.
Judges in Montpellier, in the South of France, on Friday jailed Sandrine Pissarra, 54, following the horrific killing of Amandine.
The schoolgirl was just 13 when she succumbed to a lack of food after being locked inside a store cupboard for weeks on end.
Pissara, a mother-of-eight from three relationships, admitted charges of ‘acts of torture and acts of barbarity resulting in death’, telling the court ‘I am a monstrous mother’.
Jailed alongside Pissarra was Amandine’s step-father, Jean-Michel Cros, 49, who was given a 20-year sentence after being found guilty of the same charges.
The pair had placed a camera inside the store cupboard where Amandine died, so that they could watch her agony, the court heard.
Amandine died in 2020, and now prosecutors in the southern city of Montpellier are calling for a life sentence to be handed to her depraved mother
Psychiatric reports showed that Pissarra continually attacked Amandine because she ‘looked like her father’ – someone Pissarra was estranged from.
She wanted to ‘transfer this hatred’ of Amandine’s unnamed father on to her daughter’s body, the court heard.
Just before verdicts were read out at the Herault Assizes Court, Pissara said: ‘I would like to apologise to my children.’
Passing the life sentence, judges said there should be a minimum tariff in prison of 20 years.
Medical reports delivered after Amandine’s death in August 2020 showed she died of hunger after suffering from extreme weight and muscle loss, as well as septicaemia.
Her body was skeletal and covered in infected wounds, and she weighed just 28 kg (62 pounds) while being 1.55 metres (5.1 ft) tall.
Amandine had also lost a number of teeth and had her hair pulled out, following weeks in a windowless storage room without food.
Since she was a toddler, Amandine had been kicked, punched and hit with sharp objects, the court heard.
Since she was very young, Amandine had been the victim of blows dealt by her mother
Prosecutors described Pissarra as a ‘domestic tyrant, dictator of the home, and executioner of Amandine’.
They said ‘there can only be one sentence – a life term with a minimum of 20 years served in prison.’
Questioned the day after her daughter’s death in the village of Montblanc, south west of Montpellier, Pissarra lied about Amandine suffering from eating disorders.
She said that on the day of her death, Amandine had agreed to swallow only a lump of sugar, and a high-protein drink before she started to vomit and then stopped breathing.
The mother, who was managing a nail salon at the time and has eight children from three relationships, was arrested, and placed on remand in May 2021.
Jean-Michel Cros was described by prosecutors as a ‘cowardly collaborator of the system’ who ‘deprived Amandine of care until her death’.
Cros admitted all charges, and said before verdict: ”I feel enormous guilt about this’.
A report by investigating magistrates says, ‘the sole purpose of the violence against Amandine was to drag her into shameful and humiliating agony’.
A spokesman for Pissarra’s defence counsel said she would ‘not be appealing her lif sentence’.