Two families whose babies were mistakenly swapped in a maternity clinic more than 20 years ago have been awarded 1.8 million euros in compensation, reports The Guardian.
Although both mothers expressed concerns at the time that they had been given the wrong child, the mistake was not discovered until the girls were 10. The families met a decade ago but have since kept their distance.
“It was a pretty disturbing moment,” said Manon Serrano, one of the now grown-up girls after a civil court hearing in December. “You find yourself in front of a woman who is biologically your mother, but who is a stranger.”
Although the payout was substantially less than the 12 million euros demanded by the victims, it was an unusually high award for a French court.
The extraordinary and disturbing story began on July 4th 1994 when Sophie Serrano, now 39, gave birth to a girl at the Clinique Internationale de Cannes on the French riviera.
The baby was suffering from jaundice, as were two other newborns at the clinic, a boy and a girl. As there were only two incubators equipped with lights to treat the babies, the two girls, who were not wearing identification bracelets, were put in the same machine. An auxiliary nurse unwittingly switched them when she returned the babies to their mothers.
“At that moment, I had a doubt. I noticed that she had more hair. It struck me as odd and I mentioned it, but unfortunately, nobody listened to me. The nurse who brought back my baby was deaf to me and wasn’t concerned,” Serrano told RTL France. “It was negligence; something that shouldn’t happen in a job with such responsibilities. Nobody has the right to make such mistakes.”
Concerned that the girl bore no resemblance to them, Serrano and her estranged partner eventually underwent DNA tests that proved neither had any biological connection to the child they thought was their own. After they alerted the clinic, an investigation was launched.
The family of the second girl, who came from the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion, was traced and a meeting was arranged. But since then there has been little contact except through lawyers bringing the case.
“We tried to forge a link, to find a place for the other in the lives of our respective families, but it didn’t work, Sophie Serrano said in December. “It was too difficult, so we each went our separate ways. It’s too upsetting. It was the only way to find a kind of stability.”
After a criminal action against the clinic was dropped, the families decided to sue in the civil courts. The case was heard by judges in December. On Tuesday the court awarded 400,000 euros to each of the young women who had been swapped at birth, 300,000 euros each to three of the parents, and 60,000 euros to three siblings, a total payout of 1.88 million euros.
Lawyers for the clinic said they were waiting for details of the judgment before making a decision about whether to appeal. A spokesperson blamed the mixup on a staff member who had been found to be a “chronic alcoholic”.