For five years, between 2017 and 2022, a father raped his daughter. She was then 5 to 10 years old. This man admitted the facts. He was sentenced to eleven years of criminal imprisonment following two days of proceedings before the Haute-Garonne criminal court.
How can we judge facts which, upon their simple statement, provoke the most total fear? This weekend, the Haute-Garonne departmental criminal court, meeting in Toulouse, endeavored to answer this thorny question. The accused, who is going to appear, has just entered the box, the president of the court, Valérie Noël, recalls what he is accused of: the rape of his daughter from 2017 to 2022, i.e. from the age of five to ten.
The man, aged 50, small in stature, bruised in his eyes, gives off an invariably sad air. However, when he spoke, his voice did not tremble: “I admit everything that I am accused of,” he told the court, not without surprising it. This opening changes the appearance of a trial which will constitute the quintessence of what criminal justice has the noblest to offer.
The courage of a 10 year old child
All the players in this hearing will try to make it a way to come out on top for the accused and the victim. Starting with the latter’s lawyers, the first to plead. My Tabata Quentin and Myriam Guedj Benayoun both strive to express the inexpressible: what their client endured.
Me Quentin is moved by the courage of “a ten-year-old child who dared to speak”. As for Me Guedj Benayoun, if she salutes the quality of the debates led by President Noël as well as the elegance of the defense lawyers, she still reminds the accused, quoting Camus, “A man can’t be stopped.”
A life on the run
In their wake, the attorney general, Martial Renaud, takes the floor for his indictment, at the end of which he asks for 12 years of criminal imprisonment. For the defense lawyers, Ioana Massonnat and Julien Aubry, the task is immense. His defenders describe a man whose chaotic life journey has deeply isolated him.
His lawyers recount the journey of his family who, to flee the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, emigrated successively to Vietnam, to Hong Kong, passing from one poverty-stricken camp to another to finally arrive in France when their client was a teenager. Me Massonnat also praises the benefits of a hearing which will “give this man a place again in our community”.
After deliberation, the professional magistrates who make up the criminal court sentence the accused to 11 years of criminal imprisonment. The end of this tragic trial illustrates how crucial this stage is both for the victims and for the accused.
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