The parents of a 17-year-old girl, raped in October 2020 in Isère by a man released a few months ago due, according to them, to the Covid-19 epidemic, announced on Tuesday to assign the State for "misconduct heavy ”.
"Our daughter is very angry, she cannot forget and she wants justice to be done", declared the father of the victim, who requested anonymity, during a press conference organized in Lyon by his lawyer, Me Fabien Rajon.
The young girl, aged 17 at the time of the facts, lodged a complaint after suffering a rape on October 24.
His alleged attacker was indicted in Grenoble on November 5 for rape of a minor and threat of death and placed in pre-trial detention.
Sentenced in December 2018 to five years in prison, including a suspended sentence with probation, for kidnapping, violence and sexual assault on his ex-partner, the thirty-something, imprisoned in the Lyon remand center. Corbas, had been released a few months before the incident.
As provided by law, at mid-sentence, on January 6, 2020, this detainee released on November 20, 2021 had requested to benefit from an early conditional release, which had been granted to him from May 4, 2020.
Debate around the health situation
“When we filed a complaint, a gendarme told us:
This is a Covid-19 early release
.
This statement was a shock, a misunderstanding and a deep anger towards justice ”, explained the father of the victim.
Me Fabien Rajon specified that the summons against the State for "gross negligence" would be sent this Wednesday to the Paris court.
"The responsibility of the judicial institution obviously deserves, in our opinion, to be debated," he said.
The Lyon public prosecutor's office assured this Tuesday, in a press release, that the decision of the sentence enforcement judge (JAP) was "in no case a judgment of automatic release resulting from the health crisis situation, but a decision on conditional release taken at the request of the convicted person and after a favorable opinion from the Lyon Penitentiary Integration and Probation Service (SPIP), the prison administration and the Lyon public prosecutor's office ”.
In its judgment of April 24, 2020, of which AFP has obtained a copy, the JAP also relies on a psychiatric expertise of the detainee concluding that there is a “low risk of recidivism, even if it cannot be eliminated”.
The judge then referred to “the national health situation linked to the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic requiring that the occupancy rate of the Lyon-Corbas remand center, usually 130%, be reduced in order to limit the consequences of 'a possible spread of the virus within the establishment ”.
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For the prosecution, the health context only explains that the decision was taken without an adversarial debate, with the consent of the convicted person, the code of criminal procedure also providing that the occupancy rate of a penitentiary establishment can come into line with account.
A source close to the case also stressed that releases linked to the epidemic could not benefit the perpetrators of domestic violence, among other exceptions.
