An Algerian nanny was sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment for poisoning a French Jewish family for whom she was working after a French court convicted her on Thursday, according to a report from French newspaper Le Monde.
The nanny, 42, was watching over three children, who were 2, 5, and 7 years old, in January 2024, when a criminal complaint against the nanny was first filed.
The children's parents launched the complaint after noticing that a bottle of their grape juice smelled of bleach. Additionally, the mother reported that her makeup remover had burned her eyes in a way it had not before.
The report quoted the nanny as telling police that she "never should have worked for a Jewish woman" while in custody and admitted to pouring cleaning products into the parents' bottles of alcohol, a statement she later recanted during the trial, claiming she "made it up" while under police pressure.
The Paris judge presiding over the case described her actions as a "major betrayal of trust" against the family.
The court, however, dismissed the aggravating circumstance of antisemitism on procedural grounds, stating that her comments were made too late after the poisoning and were not recorded in the presence of a lawyer.
'It's not hatred, it's suffering'
The defendant's lawyer, Solange Marle, had argued her client had been motivated by a payment dispute, according to the Le Monde report.
"The constant comparison between these two lives, this feeling of social oppression, led to this excessive act. It's not hatred, it's suffering," said Marle.
Additionally, the defendant was found guilty of administrative forgery for using a fake Belgian identity card.
Along with her prison sentence, the former nanny has also been banned from entering French territory for five years.