Marrakech residents opened their eyes on May 31 on an appalling scandal when a young man discovered a little child forsaken along with animals at the terrace of an old house in Hay Bab Doukkala.
The young man was outraged after seeing the little boy in heart-twisting conditions, deprived of human contact, food, freedom and completely naked.
He hurried to the police to denounce the repugnant crime, which had left the child, Ahmed Yassine, noseless and torn with grief.
The unfortunate child was the fruit of a penniless women's illegitimate relationship.
Yassine was born in 2000 of an unknown father. He stayed with his mother and her sister till he was 3 years.
According to an interview published in the Moroccan daily Al Ahdath Al Maghribia, the mother was obliged to work to earn her living.
The mother said that after endless requests from her friend, a secretary at the law court, she finally agreed to let her take care of her son, sure that he would be well treated.
However, the friend had another story. She affirmed that the mother was about to get engaged and she did not want her future husband to know about the illegitimate child. So she asked her friend to keep the boy for a few days to arrange things with her future husband, but she disappeared leaving no trace.
To make her own life, the mother destroyed her son's
Yassine's mother did indeed get married. She has a 4 year-old daughter and is pregnant. Did she forget about her fatherless child?
She pretended that whenever she asked about her son, she was told that he was living in Rabat with her friend's sister, a lawyer who had removed him from the popular neighbourhood in Marrakech to better living conditions.
The mother believed that her son was studying in a private school in Rabat. How could a mother be contented with these answers without claiming to see her son?
She said that she unceasingly asked her friend to take her to Rabat to see her son Yassine, but the old woman always found excuses to delay.
“The last news I had of him was three weeks ago,” said Yassine's mother. “She told me that her sister organised a circumcision ceremony for my son,” she continued.
Cruelty or hypersensitivity?
The mother knew that her son had been found in inhumane conditions in Marrakech. The local TV channel had even shown his picture and a video of a completely deformed and noseless Yassine.
She did not visit him.
“I cannot bear to see my son the way they have described him, especially as I have only one week to go before giving birth to my baby,” she said.
Speaking of the friend who had taken in her child, the mother said that she was astonished because she had always believed that the woman was serious and god-fearing.
The cat-feeding woman
It was in the penthouse of the friend that Yassine was found, living like a jungle child with no clothes and feeding himself with the remnants of cats and dogs' food.
The friend, 55, owner of the house, was a compassionate woman, spending most of her time buying animal food and feeding the cats of the neighbourhood.
For people in Hay Bab Doukkala, it was hard to believe that the much-caring woman, whose heart flowed with love and compassion for animals, could commit such an inhumane act towards an innocent child.
No neighbour ever intruded into her carefully closed house. The ‘serious' woman preserved her intimacy. Nothing could ever give a hint to her odd behaviour, apart from hosting lots of dogs and cats.
Referring to the wounds the police found all over the body of the noseless boy, the accused woman admitted that she used to hit the little boy because he was mischievous and annoying, and that because of her nerves, she could not bear children's agitation.
The poor child suffered the ‘friend's' bad treatment for three years.
Now he is backed by most Moroccan NGOs and Marrakech's population so that justice may be rendered
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