PARIS- A prosecutor ordered a fresh investigation into the case of France‘s first „Grandma Mum“ after she shocked the country with an admission that her handicapped brother is the father of her child. The 62-year-old woman, Jeanine, said she did it to continue the family line.
She told Le Parisien newspaper: „I may be 62 and my brother 52, but we are better able to bring up the children than a couple of drug addicts with a kid who are living off welfare. Why judge us and not them?“
Jeanine, whose surname has not been disclosed, became the world‘s third oldest mother last month when she gave birth to a boy, Benoit-David, at a hospital in France. Another woman‘s fertilised embryo had been implanted in her womb at the Pacific Fertility Center in Los Angeles, making Jeanine a surrogate mother. Jeanine revealed last week that the children‘s father was her brother Robert, who has been blind, facially disfigured and partially paralsyed since he put a shotgun to his face and tried to kill himself in 1992. The two, Jeanine and Robert, who are both single, and their 80-year-old mother are now all living in the same isolated house in the town of Draguignan in southern France. Local prosecutor Christian Girard said he had ordered an inquiry into the domestic circumstances, adding the case smacked of incest.
Jeanine already faces possible prosecution in France for circumventing laws that prohibit artificial insemination for post-menopausal women and ban surrogate motherhood. Concerns have been heightened by newspaper reports of violent incidents at the house in Draguignan. Le Figaro Magazine said police had been called to the premises several times in the past and even confiscated firearms. Jeanine said she had not committed incest and insisted she and Robert were healthy, responsible parents. „I couldn‘t pass on my genetic heritage because of my age so I wanted to pass on his and give life so our line would continue,“ she said. She denied the pair had tricked the Los Angeles fertility clinic, where they spent a reported $150,000 on treatment, into believing they were married. Le Parisien quoted the doctor who carried out the treatment as saying Jeanine had introduced Robert as her husband.
REUTERS
