Preynat case: "It took a long time to understand that the children were victims"

But who is Bernard Preynat really? Who hides behind this septuagenarian with the appearance of a brave grandfather who sits since Monday on the benches of defendants of the criminal court of Lyon for sexual abuse committed on a dozen former young scouts, while acknowledging having attacked many others and even to have committed rapes? Psychiatric experts have looked into this case of pedophilia deemed "out of the ordinary" by its scale and duration.

Bernard Preynat himself brought, perhaps without knowing it, part of the answer by revealing during the hearing Wednesday, what he had never done before: to have himself been abused in his youth, by men of the Church when he was a child at heart, on the part of the sacristan. "One day, we were both alone, he pressed me on the sex and said to me: What is it there? ".

Then at the time of the minor seminar, during a summer camp in Haute-Loire on the part of an instructor who came to pet him in the shower. Later at the seminar, from a teacher "who had the habit of washing my sex with a washcloth". Repeated gestures in a grove when the same man, now a priest, came to visit the Preynat family. He also explains how the parish priest of Saint-Louis parish in Saint-Etienne, whom the children had nicknamed "Monkey", also abused him "and many other children. But we didn't talk about it ”.

"I thought I was healed, then I started again"

"You reproduce the gestures that you have undergone in previous years, it's difficult not to make the connection", intervenes Liliane Daligand, psychiatric expert mandated by her defense. The young Bernard Preynat did not take long to inflict on young people what he had suffered. From the age of 16, when he was in turn a colony instructor, without ever stopping. However, there was an attempt at therapy in the years 1967-1968, after reports of parents. Preynat underwent psychotherapy at Vinatier, a specialized center, for one year. "I thought I was cured, then I started again," admits the defendant.

His case is a classic for the psychiatrist Liliane Daligand. "All the child molesters were victims of attacks during their childhood", explains the expert, mentioning the risk of "repeating what we experienced", of "identifying with the other", the difficulty stopping as for an addiction. "When we are in addiction, we consume more and more, it is often the case in pedophilia, we can see a progression," she explains further. But it is not there to bruise, to violate, it is the caress that interests it, not penetration. "

"A sexual pervert who does not access the suffering of the other"

While some civil parties are surprised by these late, and perhaps timely, revelations, even by questioning their reality, the psychiatrist is ready to hear them. The silence kept throughout his life on his attacks did not surprise him. “These are acts that are often silenced, experienced as a shame. It took a long time to understand that the children were victims. He thought they were accomplices. "

Michel Debout, another psychiatric expert, had evoked the previous evening, "a sexual pervert who does not access the suffering of the other", a man who "has not reached sexual maturity, a man carrying a 'infantile sexuality'.

Newsletter - Essential news

I'm registering

Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more

When Bernard Preynat claims to have stopped his sexual deviances in 1991, after an interview with Cardinal Decourtray who had decided to trust him, can it be believed? The civil parties express doubts, even if no complainant has come forward for subsequent events. Psychiatrists want to believe it. "It seems to me that he is weaned," says Liliane Daligand. The bishop's word was louder than the psychotherapy sessions. "