An investigation was opened by the prosecution of Évry (Essonne) after the complaint of rape and violence by an inmate of the Fleury-Merogis women’s remand center against a supervisor.
The 22-year-old prisoner accuses a supervisor of having raped her by “inserting her fingers into her vagina” during a search for possession of a telephone, according to her lawyer Marie Violleau.
The supervisors give another version
The young woman, in pre-trial detention since last May for complicity in armed robbery, also claims that before this search several supervisors pressed her violently against a door and against a wall, ensuring that she had not been aggressive. Facts that date back to December and for which she filed a complaint for rape and willful violence.
The investigation will give rise to a hearing of the victim before any qualification, specified a source close to the file.
The incident report written by the supervisors gives another version. According to them, the inmate tried to put a phone in her private parts. Unwilling to hand it over to prison officers, a body search was conducted and the phone was found in the pants.
“I hope that the mobilization of the International Observatory of Prisons (OIP), which revealed the affair, and the opening of an investigation will bring the prison administration out of its systematic torpor since the responsibility of the one of its members is interrogated. The seriousness of the facts denounced by my client requires full and rapid transparency on the part of its members”, indicated Me Marie Violleau.
“Law of Silence”
According to an OIP report published in 2019 on the violence committed by prison officers on detainees, “these acts take place mainly off-camera and obey the law of silence, making the search for the truth particularly complicated” .
However, “in the absence of evidence, the word of the detainee often has much less weight than that of the prison officer”, giving the example of the incident reports produced by the guards who “are little questioned question, even though many cases refer to falsified writings”.