His apologies, belated, formulated in writing, invoking his creative freedom will not have been enough: the Flemish choreographer and visual artist Jan Fabre was sentenced to a prison term of eighteen months suspended for five years by the criminal court of Antwerp, Friday April 29. The 63-year-old artist was absent, as during the first two hearings of the lawsuit brought against him by eleven former dancers from his company, Troubleyn. The court considered that half of the charges were insufficiently proven or prescribed, but it retained one case of sexual assault and five others of violence and humiliation, facts which took place between 2012 and 2015.
“This is an important recognition and step, not just for the brave women who testified, but for other victims who wondered if such behavior was punishable.commented M.and An-Sofie Raes, one of the young women’s advocates. The judge found that Mr. Fabre had created, for years, a harmful, hostile and insulting work environment. »
If the public prosecutor had demanded a prison sentence of three years, the creator’s lawyer had asked for the release of his client. Mand Eline Tritsmans, however, said she was satisfied with a judgment which, according to her, brings the case down to “correct proportions”. Speaking of the sexual assault accepted by the court as a strong kiss – and “consented” – and the violence attributed to the choreographer as a simple attack on the “worker welfare” – within the meaning of a Belgian law adopted in 1996 – the lawyer contrasted the testimonies of the complainants with those of 169 other members of Troubleyn. They disputed that the troop director behaved tyrannically or created a poisonous atmosphere. As for the formula “No sex, no solo”, used since 2018 to sum up the affair, it would only be a “cancan”according to M.and Tritsmans: his client would never have exercised any such blackmail on his dancers.
Deprivation of civic rights
The trial, and the details it provided about mockery, insults or very intimate photo shoots, in any case, knocked a world-famous designer, appreciated as far as the Palais de Buxelles, from his pedestal. , where he had been entrusted by Queen Paola with the decoration of a room. The fact that the sentence pronounced Friday is accompanied by a deprivation, for five years, of the civil rights of the person concerned could weigh heavily on the future of the company, of which several productions have already been canceled or postponed.
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