A mother was sentenced to eight years in jail last night for killing three newborn babies and hiding two of the bodies in a freezer in a case that outraged public opinion in France.

The relatively light sentence reflected hesitation in French society over whether to consider Véronique Courjault a monster or the victim of her mental fault lines. She had hidden her pregnancies even from her husband and close friends.

The middle-class housewife, dressed in a navy blue and white checked shirt, remained silent as the verdict was read out after eight hours of deliberation. Having spent three years in jail awaiting trial, she could be eligible for early release within 24 months.

The jury in Tours, central France, found Courjault guilty of smothering two baby boys in 2002 and 2003 and placing their bodies in the freezer of the family home in South Korea, where her husband, an engineer, was posted. Courjalt, 41, was also found guilty of killing and burning the body of a third child born in France in 1999, an act she revealed to investigators under questioning.

She escaped a life sentence after the court was told that she retained the support and affection of Jean-Louis, her husband, and of their two adolescent boys, aged 12 and 14. He said after the verdict: “In a few months Véronique can return to her children and that will be start of a new beginning. I’m sure it will be a happy moment. I have just announced the verdict to my children and I can assure you there is joy at home.”

In emotional testimony that lawyers said was likely to have weighed heavily on jurors’ minds, Mr Courjault had said: “It is clear that Véronique’s actions were absolutely not calculated. For me she is ill. I have no doubt about Véronique’s potential as a wife and as a mother. We must free that potential.”

He also told the court of the day he discovered the two bodies in the freezer in 2006. “Suddenly I saw a hand. The baby’s body was wrapped in a towel, in a bag. I didn’t understand a thing.”

The mother, on holiday in France at the time, at first insisted that the infants were not hers and continued the denial even after DNA evidence proved that they were. When she eventually confessed, prosecutors sought to charge her husband with complicity. But they dropped the case against him after becoming convinced that he had never realised that his wife had been pregnant.

Courjault said that she had hidden the condition with flowing clothes, while psychiatrists told the trial that women who seek to push pregnancies into their subconscious tend to forestall physical change.

However, experts were unable to agree on whether Courjault was suffering from the syndrome of pregnancy denial, which can make women completely unaware that they are about to give birth. “Mrs Courjault knew that she pregnant but she was not really conscious of this. She knew, she didn’t know, she forgot, she chased the idea away,” the court was told by Fulbert Jadech, a psychologist.

The dilemmas were summed up by Philippe Varin, the prosecutor, whose call for a measured sentence was followed by the jury. “Do not demonise Véronique Courjault,” he said. “But do not turn her into an icon either.”

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