Parental Nightmare Babies swapped in clinic

12 million euros in damages ?: Babies exchanged 20 years ago

09/02/2015

About 20 years ago, two babies in a clinic were swapped in southern France. In a process will now be decided on claims for damages of the parents. They demand twelve million euros. However, the two young women do not want to return to their respective birth parents.

Babies were placed in a bed together
Two newborn girls - Manon and Mathilde - initially connects only that they get jaundice both days after birth and are placed together for reasons of space in a cot. As the news agency dpa reports, only years later it becomes clear that they also share a very dramatic fate: An employee of a birth ward in Cannes exchanges the two girls after their UV irradiation. When this is clarified years later, the parents complain and demand twelve million euros in damages. This is now the decision of the district court in Grasse near the Côte d'Azur.

Mothers were in doubt in the clinic
„If it happened to us then it can happen to others“, says Sophie Serrano, one of the two mothers. While her biological daughter Mathilde grew up only 30 kilometers away, Mrs. Serrano raised Manon. It has been reported that the two young mothers had already filed doubts in the clinic when their alleged children were handed to them. This is because one parent is fair-skinned, the other, however, comes from the French island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean. Why she accepted the child, Serrano explained that she was young and exhausted from birth: „I believed it in the end.“ And the other woman was the same.

Daughter with a different complexion than the father
After all, the interchange finally caught on with the husband of Sophie Serrano, who had become too colorful after ten years. It is said that he had a DNA test taken because he was exposed to a smug ridicule because his daughter has a very different complexion than himself. This revealed that both are not parents. After this shock, research revealed the interchange. Over time, this became a thick court record, because voluntarily wants to pay the hospital no compensation. A lawyer of the clinic argues: „The interchange goes back to an employee of the clinic, who has not followed the rules of conduct, because of severe depression and chronic alcoholism.“ In addition, she raises the question of why the young mothers at that time so accepted.

Daughters do not want to return to their parents
Both parents - one of whom wants to remain anonymous - live near Grasse. It is said that they met each other and their biological daughters, but without them „re-exchange“ had been agreed. In any case, the two young women do not want to go back to their biological parents. They are celebrating their 21st birthday in July and are looking forward rather than backward. „After the process, I will get better“, one of the two. According to her, the reunion with her birth mother had been very confusing and strange: „You meet a woman who is unknown to you.“

Newborn receive bracelet with her name
The case sounds like a good script material. But the movie about exchanged babies already exists. „Life is a long, calm river“, is the name of the work of Étienne Chatiliez from 1988, which deals with a 50-year interchanges. A similar case also happened in Russia in 2011. A maternity hospital was there to pay 140,000 euros in damages because she had accidentally confused twelve babies twelve years earlier. However, in cases of this kind individual cases have to be assumed. In many countries around the world, after birth, all children in the clinic receive a small bracelet with their name around the wrist, so that confusion should be ruled out. (Ad)