The Seven-Year Switch

Plump and pleasant Janine Piesset and her husband, a plumber, live in a tiny red brick house in a pleasant corner of Roubaix (pop. 98,834). Until recently, their home was a happy one, and its brightest adornment a smart, pretty girl going on seven, whom they call Viviane.

A few miles away from the Piessets in one of the dreariest slums of the same northern French city live wan and wasted Jeanne Derock, a local mill worker, her husband Jean-Baptiste, a wounded war veteran able to do only occasional work, and their five children, all of whom sleep in beds knocked together out of old fish crates by papa Derock.

Last week, as the result of nearly seven years of slow and painful litigation pursued by Mme. Derock with the aid of sympathetic lawyers and newsmen, a French court ordered the child known as Viviane Piesset taken from her own pleasant home and delivered to the home of the Derocks. Why? After pondering the results of blood tests and other evidence, the court had decided "with the greatest certainty" that Viviane was in reality Louise, a child born out of wedlock to Mme. Derock within one hour of the birth of a legitimate son to Mme. Piesset in the same hospital.

On the night in question, nurses and midwives had told each of the mothers the sex of her baby, but because each had had a hard time at the birth, neither mother saw her child naked until she was ready to take it home. By then a weird Gilbert and Sullivan baby switch had apparently taken place. When Mme. Piesset, whose only daughter had died only three years before, found that the boy baby she had called Guy was in reality a girl, she thought it an act of providence, and pursued the matter no further. Jeanne Derock, on the other hand, was mystified and indignant. Unwillingly taking the boy she had registered as Louise, she made no effort to change his legal name, instead began a long and dusty march from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, seeking restitution of her daughter.

Last week as the court handed down its decision, the Piessets still adamantly maintained that Viviane was their true child, kept her well out of sight behind drawn shutters. They would be willing to take the boy that the court said was theirs, but only on condition that they could keep the girl. Threatening police action, Mme. Derock was more determined than ever to take possession of her daughter. All over France, passionate parents argued furiously over the rights and justice of the two mothers' cases. But for the little boy who for seven years had lived unwanted under a girl's name, nobody seemed to have a thought.

"Please, Maman," he said to his foster mother when she returned triumphant from court, "what's going to happen to me?"

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