A Montreal mother charged with child abandonment after leaving her three-year-old daughter in a field near a major Ontario highway has been found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder.
Quebec court Judge Bertrand St-Arnaud made the declaration Monday at the Valleyfield courthouse after the 34-year-old woman was required to undergo a psychiatric assessment.
She was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and will require lifelong treatment.
The accused’s name is subject to a publication ban to protect the toddler’s identity.
Police found the woman’s three-year-old daughter alive and conscious in a field near a highway in Ontario on June 18, four days after she was reported missing by her mother in Coteau-du-Lac, Que., triggering a massive police search.
The woman was arrested and charged with criminal negligence, causing bodily harm and unlawful abandonment of a child.
According to the police interrogation video submitted on Monday, the woman told authorities she had an affair with a colleague and had become convinced that he had “possessed” or “programmed” her daughter.
“OK, so the first time it happened… I recognized it as something supernatural because the behaviour was off. It was like she… I know this sounds crazy, but it was like she was becoming possessed by a demon,” the woman first told investigators during her interrogation.
She told police that she was afraid for her daughter’s life, and that’s why she left her on the side of the road.
“And I went back immediately, and she was gone,” she said.
The psychiatrist who evaluated the mother concluded she should remain in custody at a Montreal psychiatric institute, but could eventually be permitted some unescorted leaves with conditions.
St-Arnaud issued his ruling after the Crown and defence agreed on a set of facts in the case, as well as on the psychiatrist’s conclusion that the woman’s mental state should prevent her from being convicted.
According to the court, on the morning of June 15, the woman sent co-workers text messages and emails, which the Crown said exhibited her fragile mental state.
She also posted a troubling video to TikTok, holding the girl and saying, “you try that again and this is going to get ugly.”
She quickly left her Montreal home without her phone so as to not be tracked.
Later that day, the woman entered a store in the Montérégie area and reported her daughter missing, saying that she did not remember the toddler’s whereabouts.
“It was a hostile environment for a child,” Crown prosecutor Lili Prévost-Gravel told the judge, of the highway where the girl was left with no food, water or shelter.
The young girl, who is now in her father’s custody, suffers from nightmares.
The courts heard that the father has now been forced to stay home from work so he can be with her at all times.
“Right now, he can’t leave her alone, so he can’t work,” Prévost-Gravel said. “He must always be in her presence, and there’s the fear of being abandoned, of course.”
She will also require ongoing psychiatric care, Prévost-Gravel said.
The toddler was hospitalized for four days, severely dehydrated.
She also had multiple insect bites, lesions from poison ivy and was swollen and infected as her diaper had not been changed in days.
The girl had kept her fists clenched for so long that she had difficulty relaxing her fingers.
The judge is now expected to decide whether the woman should be released from detention while receiving medical treatment.
With files from CTV News’ Denise Roberts and The Canadian Press.
