In episode 4 of “Sambre”, broadcast this Monday evening on France 2, the viewer meets a geomatician played by Clémence Poésy. Did this character really exist?
From 1988 to 2018, a man raped and sexually assaulted dozens of women on the banks of the Sambre River, in the north of France. Despite the numerous alerts and investigations launched over all these years, it took no less than 30 years for the police and judicial authorities to take up this matter and finally arrest the culprit.
It is this story, which highlights the dysfunctions of justice and the police, that Jean-Xavier de Lestrades wanted to feature in Sambre, a mini-series in 6 episodes freely adapted from the book Sambre, fluoroscopy of a news itemby journalist Alice Géraud.
Each episode of Sambre focuses on a new protagonist in the story, starting with the first victim, Christine Labot, played for the occasion by Alix Poisson.
The fourth episode, broadcast this Monday, November 20 from 10:05 p.m. on France 2, focuses on the character of Cécile, a geomatician played by Clémence Poésy, who will be requisitioned by a Belgian investigating judge to work on the case, and thus try to identify the area in which the rapist lives.
Does geomatics really exist?
If in American series we are used to following profilers who manage to arrest rapists and murderers by defining a standard profile, this is the first time that we are confronted with the profession of geomatician.
However, it is an academic discipline that really exists. Geomatics (contraction of geography and computer science) is a discipline bringing together the practices, methods and technologies that make it possible to collect and analyze geographic data.
The objective is to spatially represent collected data to identify, represent and demonstrate the results of statistical analyses. Geomatics thus makes it possible to bring a new axis of analysis to the data.
In the case of Sambre, the character of Cécile uses geomatics to find the geographical area in which the rapist lives. Questioned on the subject during a press conference, Alice Géraud confirmed that a Belgian judge had indeed called on a geomatician to help her in the investigation, but she made it clear that “the characterization of the character and his obsession were purely the work of fiction.”
The report she gave to the judge was obviously not as precise as that of the series. “She had glimpsed that he was a normal guy, who had a fairly small scope of action and that he had a fixed residence. But his report was much less precise. This is certainly the episode furthest from reality. It is the most allegorical and the most fictional.”
Unlike the anecdote about the sketch of the rapist, this part of the story has therefore been slightly modified.
Watch two new episodes of Sambre this Monday, November 20 from 9:10 p.m. on France 2. The series is already available in full on the free france.tv platform.