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Portugal’s National Republican Guard arrested 41-year-old French national Marine Rousseau alongside a 55-year-old man earlier this week after two young boys were found abandoned by the side of a main road.
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According to the police force, the pair are “suspected of committing the crimes of domestic violence and exposure and abandonment, related to the occurrence involving two minor children found alone next to the public road in the municipality of Alcácer do Sal.”
Rousseau was arrested around 170 kilometres from where the children were found.
On social media, she presents herself as a “sexologist” who, she says, can help “all people who have suffered trauma to regain serenity and sexual satisfaction.”
On professional networks like LinkedIn, she says she “specialises in body practices, developmental dynamics and specific care for trauma.”
She is said to have studied psychomotricity at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.
Family reported her missing
Rousseau’s family reported her disappearance to the French authorities.
“On 11 May 2026, the Colmar police station was contacted by the family of a 41-year-old woman living in Colmar who had disappeared from her home without giving any explanations,” the Colmar public prosecutor’s office said in a statement, per TF1. The disappearance had been deemed concerning, especially as she had left behind another child, aged 16.
The public prosecutor of Colmar, Jean Richert, said that the children’s father, separated from their mother, had also approached the authorities with a complaint of child abduction, TF1 reported. The French press indicated that it was the mother who had legal custody of the children.
The disappearance was investigated by French police who, according to the public prosecutor’s office, managed to locate the woman “successively in the south of France, in Spain and in Portugal, but without being able to contact her”.
News of the children’s discovery an investigation in both Portugal and France, with the Colmar prosecutor’s office opening a judicial enquiry into “child neglect.”
While information about Rousseau is scarce, details of her current partner, identified as Marc Ballabriga, who was also arrested by the GNR, have been reported in French media.
According to Le Parisien, he is a former police officer, convicted in 2010 of harassment and domestic violence against the mother of his daughter. The French newspaper quotes a source close to the case as saying Ballabriga was sentenced to nine months in prison and two years suspended over the case.
Despite the conviction, a psychological assessment carried out at the time reportedly described him as a “normal person” and “without pathologies.” The same source explained to the French newspaper that the man had “gone through a long period of depression which led him to resign from his post” in the police.
On social media, the man says that he worked as a “slave for the Ministry of Defence” between 1994 and 2010, and has also posted several conspiracy theories, the latest dated March.
The couple will be brought before a judge today.
“Minors are in good health”
The two children were found alone earlier this week by the side of a main road in an area of scrubland in Alcácer do Sal, in the Setúbal district.
A couple driving past noticed the children, telling Portuguese media that they appeared confused as they told them they had been taken to the forest, supposedly to play.
Following the tip-off, “GNR soldiers immediately travelled to the scene, where they located the minors and ensured their protection and safety,” police said.
They were taken to the Alcácer do Sal Territorial Post, “where the soldiers endeavoured to provide the first care, ensuring food, comfort and an atmosphere of tranquillity and protection, particularly important given the age and emotional fragility of the children”, they added.
In hospital, the boys were found to be in apparent “good health” and were later discharged.
The pair are now in the care of a temporary foster family.
Portuguese and French authorities have been in contact to determine the children’s future and a possible return to French soil. The boys’ father is reportedly on his way to Portugal.
The Setúbal District Court has made it clear that the children can only be returned to France following a formal request from the French authorities.
“It will be up to the French judicial authorities, through the mechanisms of judicial co-operation, to initiate the process of returning the children to the State of their habitual residence. In this case, the French courts are internationally competent to decide on definitive protection measures and parental responsibilities,” the court said.
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