Arrested in 2018, Dino Scala, nicknamed the “rapist of the Sambre”, appears this Friday, June 10, 2022 before the assizes of the North, for the rapes and sexual assaults committed on 56 victims.
For thirty years, no one suspected for a second the actions of Dino Scala. In February 2018, this 65-year-old worker was arrested for the assault of a woman in the Belgian town of Erquelinnes, after his license plate was identified on CCTV footage. In police custody, he then recognizes the facts with which he is accused. But at that point, the authorities are about to discover that it’s since 1988 that this father of a family rages between France and Belgium, on a radius of thirty kilometers around the river of the Sambre. More than four years after his arrest, Dino Scala, nicknamed “the rapist of the Sambre”appears before the Assizes of the North, in Douai, from this Friday, June 10, 2022. He is accused of 17 rapesof 12 attempted rapesof 27 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults.
In all, these are 56 alleged victims who almost systematically report a similar modus operandi: an attack that takes place at dawn, in winter, and generally, on public roads. These women all, or almost all, described a man who had seized them from behind by strangling them with the forearm or a link in order to drag them away. He threatened them, often with the help of a knife, tying their hands and feet or blindfolding them. For years, Dino Scala operated without ever being worried. And for good reason, despite complaints and investigations by the police, he remained untraceable. Until that day in February 2018 when he was arrested after a new attack, and recognized “the vast majority of facts”indicates to The voice of the North his lawyer, Me Margaux Mathieu.
A “very discreet man”
After “spontaneous confessions from the start of his police custody”Dino Scala is now located “with the same desire to explain, to answer questions” underlined his lawyer, while the first day of his trial at the assizes, which will end on July 1, will make it possible to determine who really is this former worker and coach of local football clubs, married and father of a family, described as well integrated into his commune of Pont-sur-Sambre, in the North. A “very discreet man who was helpful to everyone” as the mayor Claude Dupont even described to Franceinfo. During this trial, it will be a question in particular of determining “causes of actions” by Dino Scala. “He wants to explain them as well as possible and is aware of the gravity of the facts”, assured his lawyer. He faces up to twenty years in prison.