French woman goes on trial for deaths of 8 of her babies

DOUAI, France (AP) — One day in the summer of 2010, a man was digging in his garden in northern France when he discovered a trash bag containing the remains of an infant.

Frenchwoman Dominique Cottrez confessed to secretly bearing and then killing eight of her newborns, saying she feared they were children of a long, incestuous relationship with her father.

[...] forensic exams on the remains of the eight infants, and tests on her two living grown daughters showed that all were fathered by Cottrez's husband, according to court documents.

Cottrez, 51, went on trial Thursday in the city of Douai, accused of multiple counts of first-degree murder of minors.

Cottrez's obesity appeared to hide the pregnancies, which went unnoticed by her husband, children, neighbors, colleagues — and even doctors at a nearby hospital.

Dozens of forensic and psychiatric experts, police investigators and witnesses, including her husband, daughters and siblings, will take the stand to help understand the incomprehensible, and perhaps to help the defendant, who sobbed repeatedly during the first day's hearing, to open up.

A withdrawn, secretive nurse's aide, Cottrez told investigators she was raped by her father, first when she was 8 and repeatedly through her childhood and teenage years, according to judicial documents.