A French mum who ‘abandoned her children’ in the Portuguese woods has been sent to the country’s most infamous women’s prison.
Marine Rousseau and stepfather Marc Ballabriga are accused of ditching Barthélémy, five, and Zacharie, three, near Alcácer do Sal in France.
Rousseau, 41, was sent to the Tires Prison in Lisbon for pretrial detention on Saturday, Portugal’s Lusa News Agency reports.
The sexologist will be unable to leave her cell and cannot contact other inmates. Ballabriga, 55, has been sent to Setúbal Prison.
Tires, often the focus of true-crime documentaries, is home to around 450 inmates and is associated with murderers and child abusers.
The lock-up has a daycare facility for pregnant inmates as well as a school, hairdresser and an area to do crafts, make rugs and use a loom.
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Rousseau and Ballabriga allegedly blindfolded the children and told them they could only remove them once they had found a buried knife.
Barthélémy dug up the knife after several minutes and took off their blindfolds only to find their parents were gone, they told police.
All they had on them were a change of clothing, two bottles of water, cookies, a pear and an orange.
Barthélémy and Zacharie were told by their parents that they were out in the woods to find a hidden toy.
The ‘terrified’ youngsters were found by Eugenia and Artur Quintas wandering the rural roads of Monte Novo do Sul at 7pm on Tuesday.
Artur told SIC Notícias that the children were ‘screaming and crying’ as they walked along National Road 253 (EN253).
‘To trick the children, their mom blindfolded them and left them in the forest to play a game,’ he said.
‘They told them to go and look for a toy.’
The couple took the brothers to a nearby police station and, after being given a clean bill of health by doctors, are now in foster care.
The children’s father had reported them missing to the French police and accused Rousseau of child abduction.
While the mother’s family reported Rousseau had vanished on May 11.
Prosecutor Jean Richert told AFP: What was surprising was that she wasn’t home, she had no reason not to be, and she didn’t notify anyone.
‘We managed to narrow down her whereabouts, successively in the south of France, in Spain and in Portugal, but without being able to contact her.’
Rousseau and Ballabriga were arrested while sitting in a terraced cafe near the city of Fátima on Thursday.
Before being sent to their respective prisons, Correio da Manhã reported the couple could be heard in their separate cells ‘shouting at each other’.
Setúbal District Court heard that the defendants were placed in pre-trial detention as they are considered flight risks.
Ballabriga, a former French gendarmerie officer, is also accused of aggravated assault.
Some of his final social media videos before his arrest show him wandering fields, filming animals and staring up at the sky.
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