A gruesome piece of news broke in the Senegalese media over the weekend about a doctor from Dakar, in the process of issuing a divorce, who allegedly poisoned his three children before committing suicide in his clinic.
Cases of violence against children, caused by parental separation, are rarely reported in this West African country. In addition to the appalling nature of this incident, the father’s act and the parents’ social background contributed to the newspapers making headlines
The father, a dentist by profession, gave a lethal injection to his three children – a boy and two little girls – before committing suicide by cutting his veins, the newspapers reported.
In the process of divorcing, he shared custody of the children with his gynecological wife and watched his children on the weekends, according to media reports. On Saturday, he went and picked up his children from their mother’s house before ending their lives and his own at his clinic in Dakar, newspapers reported.
The bodies were found Sunday and taken to hospital for an autopsy, they said.
Asked today, police spokesman Mohamed Giege did not provide details about the case. “We are in the research phase. “In cases of homicide, we are launching an investigation,” he said.
The dentist left behind a ten-page suicide note addressed to his wife, according to the press, with a variety of media outlets publishing the entire note.
The dentist said he did not want “offspring from a loveless marriage”.
“You told me that ‘you thought of all the possible scenarios’ obviously, there is one that escaped you,” he wrote.
In a press release, the Media Ethics and Professional Conduct Council called on journalists to be “more vigilant” and to ensure “compliance with ethical and ethical rules in image processing”.
Nevertheless, the media published the photos of the three children.
