France has found itself shaken by the case of a primary school child who, it recently emerged, lived alone for two whole years in a flat in the southwest of the country.
It’s an extraordinary story. One which has prompted shock and soul-searching among the French. How a small child could live on his own for two years, undiscovered, undoubtedly raises questions about the social and cultural health of a country where such an astonishing thing can take place.
The boy was just nine years old when he was abandoned by his mother in 2020 – during the height of the Covid crisis in France. The situation was not discovered until two years later in 2022, when a neighbour reported the then 11-year-old child for helping himself to tomatoes from his vegetable plot, which the boy had been using to sustain himself.
The Times, which did a dispatches investigation into the story, reports that the boy sustained himself by eating biscuits, cake, tinned food and scavenging food from neighbours, including helping himself to tomatoes grown on a nearby balcony.
He slept under three blankets because the heating in the flat would not work, the trial this month heard. The flat also had no hot water.
Yet, in what seems surely to border on the miraculous, the child did not raise suspicions from his teachers or authorities in the village of Nersac near Angouleme. Remarkably, the child still managed to get himself to school, ten minutes away, on his own. There, he appeared normal, was clean, and got good grades, according to sources.
The mayor of Nersac, Barbara Couturier explained that there was nothing to indicate that his situation was so dire, reasoning this was why the alarm was never raised.
“He was smiling, a very good pupil, always clean and polite. Nothing suggested he was abandoned. I challenge anyone who can say they would have detected this situation,” she told the local press.
“He really was good at school. He did his homework, he was well dressed, he was clean and he was always on time. Kids like that fly under the radar. We don’t worry about them,” she said.
The boy’s mother, Alexandra Oger, in recent weeks, received a six month prison term to be served at her residence with an electronic tag, for abandoning and endangering her son, along with a further 12 months suspended following a trial which lasted less than an hour – and at which no witnesses were heard.
As the country reels from the case, it has emerged that Oger abandoned her son to go and live with a new female partner and her children. According to French media reports, Oger even used a €24,000 lottery win to have an IVF baby with her female partner, travelling to Spain in 2017 where they underwent a course of artificial insemination.
It was following the birth of that child that the life of Oger’s second son began to go downhill. Oger, who also has an older son who went to live with his father, used to take both children with her to her partner’s house, yet according to local sources, the younger one grew unhappy about having to sleep on a mattress on the floor. Oger told neighbours that her new partner – with whom Oger co-parented her own children – found the child “difficult.”
According to The Times investigation, it was at some point in 2020 that his mother made the decision to leave both of her sons behind in Nersac. The elder of the two, after a few weeks, reportedly went to live with his father – while the younger brother, who didn’t appear to have contact with his own dad, remained alone in the flat.
The rest of the lottery money was used on an outdoor swimming pool and other items for their home in Sireuil, three miles away from the flat where Oger’s son had been left.
Oger, 39, is said to have visited only occasionally, bringing the unnamed boy food on her scooter. The boy’s father, who lived in another town, was not charged. He is reported to be a mechanic, who the child was conceived with following a short fling. The father of her first child, who is four years older, also reportedly left the single mother.
It is reported that neighbours did raise concerns to the mother – however she insisted that she was caring for her son and told them to stay out of her business. Yet, it seems incredulous that suspicions were not voiced to authorities from any of the residents living in the other 11 flats in the council block known as Petal 1.
It’s poignant to read how the young boy went on to complete his last year of primary school, at Alfred de Vigny, a short walk from his home, before he moved to a middle-school at Châteauneuf-sur-Charente, seven miles to the southwest.
An elderly neighbour, Béatrice, who discovered the boy had been living alone, shone some light on the unusual situation while speaking to The Times.
“It was not as if he were a child completely abandoned in the forest,” she said.
“His mother would come every couple of days or so on her scooter to bring him something to eat. She would also take away his dirty clothes and bring clean ones.”
Meanwhile, the manager of a local supermarket said that he had seen the mother and child visit his store, where the mother would buy her son bus tickets and fuel for her scooter, as well as food.
The child endured cold winters alone in the flat – which possibly explains why he went to school every day, where it would be warm and he could have meals. The gas supply to the flat was not working, meaning there was no heating. The electricity, however, was still on, which meant the boy spent a lot of his time playing computer games and watching TV.
He was able to preserve his secret by never inciting school friends around, while he kept mostly to himself and told classmates he ate alone. A retired truck driver who lived in the flat directly across from the boy’s told The Times that his son, Anthony, who would have been 15 at the time, had invited the boy to his home to play computer games. The child, he said, didn’t say anything about his situation or about his mother.
“We had no idea,” he said. “We couldn’t have imagined anything like that was going on.”
Another man who lived in the flat also failed to raise the alarm, though said he suspected something unusual. He would get up to walk his dogs at 5am and would see that the television would be on through the open curtains in flat number nine.
It was by running up and down the flat and jumping on the bed that the boy was able to entertain himself, and it was this that led to a neighbour learning the truth.
“Doesn’t your mother tell you to stop jumping all the time because it makes the building shake?” A frustrated Béatrice asked the child as he was leaving the flat one afternoon.
“No, I live on my own,” he replied.
“How’s it possible at your age?” she asked, to which he responded, “It’s just like that.”
A teacher has described the child as “very mature, very resilient” – with the boy now having been taken into the care of a foster family. He reportedly no longer wants anything to do with his mother, who visited him just twice in the year he was first placed in care.
The court found that the evidence was “overwhelming” with the judge, Ancelin Nouaille, telling Oger: “You abandoned your son.”
The case was described as “sad” by prosecutor Anne Medioni, who said: “The child had no way even to wash with hot water.” She also said there was a “scary” side to the story which has rocked France.
It is a story which raises big questions about how disconnected we as a society have become. It is also an example of the severe suffering that is brought about through family breakdown, and situations where partners are chosen over children. While all too common, it is often a topic which we are too polite to want to discuss, for fear of offending.
But above all, it’s a real-life tale of remarkable resilience, and of an incredibly brave and strong child who will no doubt go far. It is often the case that trauma and family breakdown can produce dysfunction. But by all accounts, this young boy is a stellar example of being resilient and rising above challenges when life doesn’t deal you the best hand. And it is for certain that the whole of France, perhaps moved and horrified in equal measure by his plight, will be wishing him a happy and fulfilled life.