Jury weighs case of woman accused of starving baby

TAUNTON, Mass. – A jury began deliberating Monday whether a woman accused of starving her baby to death to fulfill a religious prophesy was a willing participant or was victimized by her husband and the sect they belonged to.

In closing arguments in Taunton Superior Court, prosecutor Walter Shea said the real victim was Karen Robidoux’s baby, Samuel, who died in 1999 just days shy of his first birthday.

Robidoux’s lawyer, Joseph Krowski, said she was brainwashed and tortured by her husband, Jacques, and other members of a tiny Attleboro-based religious sect called “The Body,” which rejects modern medicine.

The jury did not reach a verdict Monday and was scheduled to reconvene at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Robidoux “suffered a psychological battery of unparalleled proportions,” Krowski told the jury. “This isn’t about religion. It’s about what some evil, clever people can do.”

Jacques Robidoux was convicted of first-degree murder in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

If convicted, his wife faces life in prison, but could be eligible for parole after 15 years.

Shea said Robidoux was a willing participant in the starving of baby Samuel, whose body was found in a shallow grave in Maine’s Baxter State Park.

“Karen Robidoux made a choice,” Shea said. “She chose her husband and her faith over the life of her child.”

After nearly two weeks of prosecution testimony, Krowski called just two witnesses to the stand – both forensic psychologists who examined Robidoux at a state hospital in Taunton. Robidoux herself never testified.

“She didn’t need to,” Krowski said outside court. “She has no burden. It’s up to the commonwealth to prove she was not mentally impaired. And I think it was overwhelming that she was.”

Psychologist Ronald Ebert, testifying for the defense Friday, said Robidoux told him she began withholding solid food from her 10-month-old son after her sister-in-law told her about a message she received from God: Karen was “too vain” and God planned to punish her by killing one of the twins she believed she was pregnant with at the time.

Robidoux told Ebert she was told she could save the unborn twin if she put herself on a high-fat diet and fed Samuel only her own breast milk.

But because Robidoux was pregnant, she was producing only trace amounts of breast milk. She continued to try to breast-feed Samuel every hour, as called for by the prophecy.

Prosecutors say the boy was starved for 51 days, dying just three days before his first birthday.

Robidoux later gave birth to a baby boy; she had not

been pregnant with twins.

Krowski said the abuse Karen Robidoux endured began years earlier. An unwed mother at 15, she grew up in a strict religious family and was married off to Jacques Robidoux, whose father was the leader of the Attleboro sect. The group isolated itself from society and modern culture, shunning doctors, banks, televisions, radios and newspapers.

“This was no marriage,” Krowski said. “There was no love there. This was a betrothal.”

She was frequently berated by other members of the sect, including her husband, said Ebert, who said Robidoux was severely depressed and physically exhausted when her husband and other members of the group pressured her to follow the prophesy.

Psychologist Charlotte Denton, who treated Robidoux beginning in December 2002, said she exhibited all the symptoms of a woman suffering from psychological abuse.