A French mother who held down her four-year-old son while he was raped by his stepfather in a prison visiting room has been sentenced to a maximum 20 years in jail.
Her partner, 31-year-old Lionel Barthelemy, who has been jailed since August 2009 for violence, also received the same sentence from the court in Strasbourg, eastern France.
Both Sabrina Bonner, 25, and Barthelemy have admitted to multiple counts of rape and sexual assault of the boy, now eight.
Some of the assaults, including the rape in the visiting room at the Toul detention centre in eastern France, had been filmed on a mobile phone.
"The behaviour of Sabrina B. is not even that of an animal towards its child," said prosecutor Gilles Delorme, who also described Barthelemy as "a sadist in the purest form".
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At the detention centre, Bonner had blindfolded her son and made him kneel on a chair in front of Barthelemy, then held him by the arms as he was raped.
The case had raised questions over why prison staff failed to stop, or even notice, an act of such brutality taking place during what was supposed to be a supervised visit to a prisoner serving a sentence for domestic violence, who had been diagnosed as having schizophrenic tendencies.
Investigators had found that black bin bags were used to cover the glass window of the door of the visiting room.
Lawyers intend to initiate legal proceedings aimed at holding the prison to account for the suffering of the child.
