French court jails nanny for poisoning Jewish family but dismisses antisemitism charge

Aggravating circumstance thrown out for procedural reasons, as alleged antisemitic remarks to police only came after the poisoning, weren’t recorded in presence of lawyer

A French court on Thursday sentenced a nanny to a two-and-a-half-year jail term for poisoning the parents of Jewish children in her care in 2024, but ruled out the aggravating circumstance of antisemitism.

The 42-year-old Algerian woman, known as Leïla Y., had been working as a nanny for their three children when the parents filed a complaint in January 2024 after noticing that a bottle of grape juice smelled of bleach and that the mother’s eye makeup remover burned her eyes.

She was detained the following month and charged with “administering a harmful substance resulting in incapacity exceeding eight days, committed on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.”

Her arrest was only publicized this month, ahead of the start of her trial.

Investigators charged that shortly after she was hired in January 2024, the suspect began mixing toxic household cleaning agents into wine, juice, pasta and cosmetics belonging to the couple who hired her to care for their three children, aged 2, 5 and 7 at the time, according to a Le Parisien report.

According to the report, the mother of the family first alerted police on January 30, telling officers she had tasted what seemed to be cleaning fluid in her wine. She reported that her makeup remover had burned her eyes and that grape juice in the refrigerator appeared to foam and smelled of bleach. A pasta dish that had tasted normal one day suddenly had a strong “perfume” aroma the next, she said.

Several days later, on February 3, the couple’s 5-year-old daughter told her mother she had seen the nanny pour a soapy substance into a bottle labeled “Jerusalem,” a brand of kosher alcohol.

Toxicology tests later detected polyethylene glycol and other chemical agents at very high levels in wine, whisky, fig liqueur, juice and pasta seized from the home, Le Parisien said. The substances were deemed harmful and potentially corrosive, capable of causing significant digestive tract injuries, the investigating magistrate wrote in the committal order.

The nanny initially admitted, in police custody, to pouring cleaning products into bottles of alcohol belonging to her employers, telling the officers she “never should have worked for a Jewish woman” because “they have money and power.”

During the trial, however, the defendant recanted her confession, saying she had “made up” the story under police pressure and denied any antisemitic motive.

In handing down the conviction, the presiding judge at the court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre described her actions as a “major betrayal of trust” for the parents of the children.

The court, however, dismissed the aggravating circumstance of antisemitism on procedural grounds, saying her comments came too late after the poisoning and had not been recorded in the presence of a lawyer.

The defendant’s lawyer had argued her client had been motivated by a payment dispute.

“The constant comparison between these two lives, this feeling of social oppression, led to this excessive act. It’s not hatred, it’s suffering,” said the defendant’s lawyer, Solange Marle.

She was also found guilty of administrative forgery for using a fake Belgian identity card.

The sentencing comes amid soaring levels of antisemitism in France since Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023. The country saw 1,570 antisemitic incidents in 2024, nearly four times the average level before October 7, according to the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the representative organization of French Jewish groups.