The Irish schoolteacher detained in Grasse, southern France, in connection with the death of a baby boy last week has received the support of Senator Avril Doyle MEP.
Ms Doyle and the man's French lawyer insisted that he did not know his companion was pregnant, that he was not the father of the infant and that he attempted to help her when he realised she was haemorrhaging.
"He is a very honourable young man who did everything possible to get help," Ms Doyle said. "He even called her mother back in Ireland to say, 'Please can I have your permission to call an ambulance and take her to the hospital?' His statement and the case as made on his behalf is 100 per cent. I have no hesitation at all in standing over the story."
Ms Doyle said she had seen the man's family at the recent wedding of a mutual friend, and that they were former constituents.
The 34-year-old man is under investigation for failing to assist a person in danger and for failing to denounce a crime. His companion, a 21-year-old former student, has been indicted on suspicion of killing the infant after its birth on February 12th.
Ms Doyle stressed that even the young woman's sister, who spent the first weekend in February with her, did not realise she was pregnant. She told family and friends she had gained weight because of an eating disorder."I also have tremendous sympathy for a young girl who panicked, finding herself in a situation she couldn't cope with . . . It's an indictment of all of us - not just her - that she felt she couldn't come to anyone for help."
Mr Gerard-Georges Girard, the Irishman's lawyer, filed a request yesterday with Judge Thierry Laurent to have his client freed on bail. The judge has 20 days to respond.
"In her first deposition (given to French gendarmes on February 13th), Miss --- said she had hidden her pregnancy from everyone - including Mr ---," the lawyer said. "He couldn't have imagined that she might hurt an infant that he didn't know she was carrying."
The Irish woman took two flights on February 11th, from Luxembourg to Paris and from Paris to Nice.
Airlines ban women at term from flying. "She didn't look pregnant," Mr Girard said. "She never consulted a doctor, which shows how determined she was to hide her pregnancy."
It is far from certain that a crime was committed, Mr Girard insisted. "People are tearing this young woman to ribbons, and we don't have the final results of the autopsy . . . It's not been established that the infant was suffocated, strangled or drowned."
