The general prosecutor’s office on Thursday requested 20 years of criminal imprisonment against Dino Scala, “the rapist of the Sambre”, tried for rape, sexual assault or attempts on 56 victims, aged 13 to 48, between 1988 and 2018. The required sentence, with two-thirds security, is the maximum incurred by Dino Scala, 61, who has been appearing since June 10 for 17 rapes, 12 attempted rapes and 27 assaults or attempted sexual assaults, in a radius of less than 30 km around the Sambre, a river crossing the Franco-Belgian border.
Dino Scala admitted 40 assaults
“We ask you to condemn him for all 56 facts,” said Advocate General Antoine Berthelot. “We have the intimate conviction that he is the author,” he added. The accused recognizes 40 of them. “The extreme dangerousness” of Dino Scala, “his ability to conceal himself (…) requires that you protect society as long as possible”, continued Mr. Berthelot, discerning in the course of the accused “the unthinkable banality of evil”.
Remained elusive for 30 years, before his arrest in 2018 thanks to video surveillance images during a last attack in Belgium, Dino Scala “tirelessly left to hunt women, girls” and committed “despicable acts, with incredible violence”, had previously launched the other general counsel, Annelise Cau.
“The maximum sentence he incurs is, whatever happens, too low”
His victims “were all confronted with the idea of their own imminent death”, she hammered, castigating in the accused “a sadistic sexual desire”, to “submit the victims in a position of debasement” . He “imposed filthy penetrations” on “women, young girls”, “adolescent girls”: to condemn him, she said, is “to give a face to the man of the night, to these victims”, whose “life has been totally invaded, colonized” by its “emergence”.
“The maximum sentence he incurs is whatever happens too low”, while “a single” of these rapes would have at least “exposed him to a sentence of between 12 and 15 years”, he said. also developed. He advocated “a collective reflection” on premeditation, in terms of sexual crimes, which at this stage has “no legal consequences”, or even on the price of “serial crimes”.
The hearing also “shed light on the errors of thirty years” of investigation and the “scandalous” treatment reserved for certain complainants, who “were not believed, sometimes mistreated”, then “left alone”, for years.