A year in prison was required on Friday before the Besançon Criminal Court against a former magistrate adept in libertine relations, accused of having offered Internet users forced sexual relations with his 13-year-old daughter, without going to the act.
A year in prison was required on Friday before the Besançon Criminal Court against a former magistrate adept in libertine relations, accused of having offered Internet users forced sexual relations with his 13-year-old daughter, without going to the act. At the end of a hearing, at which the defendant was not present because of “his state of health”, the court reserved its decision on March 11.
Asking the court to “be severe” with regard to a man who feels “above the law”, the public prosecutor Etienne Manteaux requested a two-year prison sentence, including one year with probationary suspension of three years, an obligation of care, ten years of prohibition of activity with minors and registration in the file of the perpetrators of sexual offences. The defense, on the other hand, requested the release of this 56-year-old magistrate, dismissed last July by the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM).
This father of three children, who was vice-president of the Dijon judicial court, is being prosecuted for “instigation not followed by effect” to “commit rape of a minor” and “sexual assault on a minor”, as well as for “instigation corruption of a minor not followed by effect”. The facts, concerning his daughter born in 2007, took place between October 2019 and June 2020, when he was placed in police custody.
Suggestive pictures
The young girl, whose investigation showed that she had not been the victim of sexual violence, was represented at trial by an ad hoc administrator, whose lawyer Me Marie-Christine Klepping described an “extremely introverted” teenager. “, who would not really know of the facts alleged against her father whom she admires. The case started in October 2019 when the user of a libertine site reported that a man proposed that his daughter, then 12 years old, be associated with sexual intercourse with his wife. The investigation, carried out using cyberinfiltration, led to the questioning of this magistrate, who admitted having written these messages, but affirmed that they were “fantasies that he would never have materialized “.
“No realization of his dialogues has ever been considered,” insisted his lawyer, Me Pauline Neveu, referring to a man “who does not deny, is well aware of the harm he has done to his family”. Placed under judicial supervision, the magistrate still lives with his family. “These conversations remain at the conversation stage, but the proposals are explicit”, in particular to impose sexual relations on his daughter by force and “to make her a submissive woman”, underlined the president of the court, recalling the facts.
The man, with no criminal record or addiction problem, had also released suggestive photos of his daughter without his knowledge and ended up giving his real first name to a man with whom his wife had sex, whom he himself observed. “We are leaving the purely fantasy sphere here”, estimated the prosecutor, evoking a “search for sexual satisfaction” leading him “to constantly push the limits”. Also a magistrate, his wife had been exonerated from the end of her police custody and was not prosecuted.
“Trauma” of the Bodein affair
Like the defendant and his wife during the investigation, the defense insisted on a “trauma” linked to the Pierre Bodein case, the multi-recidivist nicknamed “Pierrot le fou” and sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment for three savage murders and two rapes committed in 2004. The defendant, who claimed to have had suicidal thoughts and anxiety attacks afterwards, was general counsel during the assize trial of Pierre Bodein in 2007, shortly after the birth of his daughter. According to Mr. Manteaux, the former magistrate “used this case to be able to clear himself”. “He will hide behind the Bodein affair so as not to take responsibility for his actions, it is not acceptable. What would have happened if he had not been arrested?” Reproached Me Delphine Girard, lawyer for the association L’Innocence en danger, which, like three other associations, asked to be a civil party.
In addition, the dismissal of the magistrate by the CSM is the subject of an appeal before the Council of State.
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