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Sect mother was being controlled, lawyer says
The Boston Globe, Aug. 22, 2002
http://www.boston.com/
Breaking from her family’s tightknit religious sect, an Attleboro woman charged with starving her infant son to death by following a prophecy from a fellow sect member will argue at trial that she was like a battered woman, under the mind control of her husband and other members of the group.
”It’s the true defense,” said Joseph Krowski, Karen Robidoux’s lawyer, who yesterday asked a judge to postpone her second-degree murder trial so that he could prepare the newly unveiled defense. ”A jury is going to say this is a horrific case and they’ll say why didn’t she do something else? There is a good, valid psychological reason she didn’t.”
It took months to convince Robidoux to agree to a defense that ultimately blames her family members, Krowski said. But her separation from the group since she’s been in jail – plus her husband Jacques’ June conviction for first-degree murder in the death of their son – led to a change of heart, he said.
Battered woman’s syndrome is not a new criminal defense, but specialists say that claiming only psychological abuse, as Krowski intends to do, is unusual. So is the addition of religion, which will be a key element in Robidoux’s trial, now postponed until Jan. 6.
But lawyers familiar with the battered woman’s defense – first used successfully in Massachusetts in the late 1980s – say its use could prove risky in a case involving the death of a child.
”The danger in a case like this is that unless the pressure on her was very, very strong, and you can translate it into something the jury could really sympathize with, the suffering of the child was so great it would, in my opinion, be hard for a jury to just acquit,” attorney Page Kelley said.
Kelley represented one of the ”Framingham Eight,” a group of convicted women who, in the early 1990s, sought freedom from prison, saying they killed their former mates in self-defense.
Prosecutors allege that Jacques and Karen Robidoux knowingly starved their 1-year-old son, Samuel, in March 1999 by withholding solid food and feeding him only breast milk, even as he grew lethargic and emaciated. The new diet was prescribed by the child’s aunt, who said she had had a vision from God.
In June, a Bristol County jury convicted Jacques Robidoux of first-degree murder, rejecting his defense that he had believed a miracle would save his son.
The Robidouxs belonged to a small religious group composed mainly of two families and the people who married into them. Often referring to itself as ”The Body,” the group rejects modern medicine, believes its members communicate directly with God, and has cut off ties to other friends and relatives. Jacques and his father, Roland, who founded the group, were its spiritual leaders.
In announcing his defense, Krowski essentially rejected an offer by prosecutors of a 10-year sentence if Karen Robidoux, 27, pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Yesterday, prosecutor Walter J. Shea dismissed Krowski’s planned defense.
”All along I’ve said these people tend to make things up as they go along,” Shea said. ”Now that they’ve seen Jacques convicted of first-degree murder with one way of handling the case, they’ve got to come up with a different way.”
In most battered woman’s syndrome cases, the woman argues that she suffered physical abuse or was physically coerced into doing something illegal.
”If someone is just controlling my mind or threatening me, I think we have a harder time [proving the defense]. But the law does leave a little bit of room to say, `I’m not the voluntary participant here that the law requires for me to be culpable,”’ said Clare Dalton, a professor of law and director of Northeastern University’s Domestic Violence Institute.
In this case, Krowski plans to argue that Robidoux was under duress from a psychological hold the group had on her and that she was unable to intervene to save her son.
Bob Pardon, director of the New England Institute of Religious Research, which has studied the Attleboro group and worked with its former members, said both Jacques and Karen Robidoux believed their spiritual salvations were at risk if they didn’t withhold solid food from the boy.
”It is a group that has a cult leader, who himself is seen by Karen and others in the group as having God speak through him,” Pardon said. ”Everything is elevated almost to an infinite level. You’re not just disobeying your husband, you’re disobeying God.”
At Jacques Robidoux’s trial, former sect members described Roland Robidoux as the group’s absolute leader and direct tie to God. According to a journal entry written by Jacques, Roland Robidoux rejected his and Karen’s idea to feed Samuel almond milk because she was not producing enough breast milk.
Renee Horton, Karen Robidoux’s sister, testified that it was Jacques who insisted they follow the diet for Samuel prescribed by his sister, Michelle Mingo.
”Karen wanted to feed Samuel solid food,” said Horton, who lived with the Robidouxs at the time of Samuel’s death. ”Jacques was very adamant about upholding Michelle’s prophecy.”
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