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French nanny in court for pouring toilet cleaner into Jewish family’s drinks
The Algerian woman is accused of adding cleaning fluid to wine, juice and a pasta dish
December 9, 2025 11:09
The Algerian woman is accused of adding cleaning fluid to wine, juice and a pasta dish
December 9, 2025 11:09A nanny in France today goes on trial after pouring toilet cleaner into the food and drink of the Jewish family she worked for.
The woman, who was hired to care for the family’s three children, aged three, five, and seven, is said to have poured cleaning products into wine drunk by the parents and fruit juice, as well as food, several months after she started working in their home in late 2023.
Identified according to French law only as Leila Y, the 42-year-old, who is Algerian, will be tried at a court in Nanterre, a town west of Paris.
According to the prosecution, when the parents noticed that their wine smelled and tasted odd, they alerted police. Tests confirmed that cleaning products had been poured into the bottles, as well into juice and a pasta dish.
The nanny was arrested days later and, after initially denying any wrongdoing, she admitted deliberately trying to intoxicate the parents. She is charged with “administrating a toxic substance”, a crime prosecutors said was “carried out on grounds of race, ethnicity, nation or religion”.
“No one was hurt because the beverages smelled and tasted so bad it was clear that there was a major problem and no one drank them,” a source close to the investigation told French newspaper Le Parisien.
As the investigation moved forward it appeared that the nanny targeted the family because they are Jewish, according to the prosecution.
One of the family’s lawyers, Patrick Klugman, told the JC that the suspect made antisemitic comments to police officers who searched her home, telling them: “Because they have money and power I should have never worked for a Jewish woman. She only caused me trouble”.
The nanny is accused of pouring toilet-cleaning products and all-purpose cleaner into drinks, including alcohol bottles labelled “Jerusalem”, which could have caused severe internal burns, the court will hear.
The nanny subsequently recanted her confession, claiming that while she did put toxic products in the family’s beverages, she just targeted the parents and only because of what she described as their attitude towards her, denying any antisemitic motive.
Her defence claims there was no criminal intent since the products she used “couldn’t have killed them”.
They will argue that this was not a hate crime but a “bad joke” carried out by a jealous and disgruntled employee who tried and failed to secure a pay rise.
The suspect has remained in prison since her arrest in February 2024. Authorities also discovered that the identification documents she had given the family, stating that she was Belgian.
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