The amateur magician accused of rape and sexual assault on 27 children, mostly committed between 2006 and 2017, was sentenced Friday, October 14 to 18 years in prison by the Assize Court for minors of Ille-et-Vilaine.
The 36-year-old man, black shirt and carefully trimmed goatee, remained impassive when reading the verdict: the Assize Court found him guilty of rape on seven victims, as well as incestuous rape and sexual assault on a minor. 15 years and corruption of minor of 15 years.
A total of 27 children, aged 3 to 15 at the time of the events, were victims in this case.
“End of a period for the victims”
This sentence is accompanied by a security period of two-thirds, as well as a ten-year socio-judicial follow-up coupled with an obligation of care.
In the audience, where several civil parties were present, the verdict was greeted with a sigh of relief.
The court went beyond the sentence required by Advocate General Stéphane Cantero, who had asked for between 15 and 18 years in prison without a security period.
For Me Gwendoline Tenier, lawyer for a 7-year-old girl raped and her mother, “
it represents the end of a period for the victims
” and “
of a judicial period which was very long.
“She hopes that this verdict”
can allow them to turn the page
“.
The trial, which lasted two weeks, was held behind closed doors before the minors' assize court because the accused was himself a minor at the time of the first acts of incestuous rape of which he is accused, on a cousin and a half-sister.
It was from 2006 that the accused, a self-employed entrepreneur managing a magic activity, would have started to use his work to get closer to children from his family and friends.
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The facts were committed in Normandy, in Deux-Sèvres, in Switzerland, often in the homes of the parents of the victims.
A first complaint was filed in 2014, but the case only broke out in 2017, when the accused said he wanted to confide in a mother "
having done something
" to her child.
Placed in police custody and then in pre-trial detention in December 2017, he admitted most of the facts.