Attempted murder: Doctor sentenced to 11 years for poisoning baby daughter

The court convicted Sarah V. (37) of attempted murder in 2020 by feeding her then 2-month-old baby girl poisoned and diluted breast milk and sentenced her to 11 years in prison. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) also accused V., a doctor from Utrecht, of making and keeping her son ill for years after his birth in 2016, but the court did not find her guilty in that case. The sentence is equal to what the OM recommended.

V.’s daughter was admitted to the hospital after her premature birth in 2020 with serious heart and respiratory complaints. The baby girl was also growing poorly and had unexplained infections. The hospital decided to test the expressed breast milk V. provided. The tests revealed it contained a high dose of loperamide, an andi-diarrhea medicine, and that the milk was diluted.

“The court assumes that you added loperamide, from outside, to the breast milk. What was your intention with this? You have never provided an explanation about this yourself,” the judge said on Tuesday, RTL Nieuws reports. The court said that V. must have realized that she was putting her baby’s life in danger. “Even when her life was in danger, you continued to add loperamide. You chose to manipulate the milk every time. You took for granted that she would die.”

According to the judge, V. also “seriously misled” the doctors and nurses in the hospital, who were struggling to figure out why the baby girl was so sick. “With these actions, you have damaged the trust of your daughter, your husband, and your other two children in an unimaginable way.”

V. has maintained her innocence throughout the trial. Her lawyer said that V. was taking loperamide herself, and it may have ended up in her breastmilk in that way.