This October 12, 2019, while he is having family dinner in the living room, Alexandre does not pick up a word. The young man has been missing, disconnected for a few weeks now. It is "no longer the same". He no longer speaks and even suspects food. Something is wrong. Before this "zombie look" and this child whom she no longer recognizes, her mother, Sandrine (note: the first names of the witnesses have been changed) , cracks. "Where is my Alexander?" The one who laughed, who always had something to say? She asked. His son ends up coming out of his silence: "This Alexander, mom, he's dead. "
Three weeks later, her 19-year-old son became the main suspect in the brutal murder of former priest Roger Matassoli, who was killed on November 4 in Agnetz. These few words and this look, she will not forget them. "He was there, but he was no longer my child," she says, still in shock. Alexandre is now imprisoned in Sequedin prison (North) in a hospital unit.
Today, Sandrine is sure: if her boy has changed and committed this "atrocious" act, it is the fault of the former man of the Church. “When I was told what he had done to the abbot, I said to myself He was abusing the kid. "
After the murder, accusations of pedophilia resurfaced. Her ex-husband and father of Alexandre, Stéphane, also claims to have been the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Father Matassoli in the 1980s.
"I should never have seen this man again"
So, what really happened with the religious? Impossible at this stage of the investigation to know for sure. But the two men had known each other for a few years.
In 2014, Alexandre, then aged 14, just moved in with his father and the latter takes him to lunch at the home of the former parish priest. "I should never have seen this man again," regrets Stéphane today.
Indeed, although abused from his 7 years to his 14 years, he never managed to extricate himself completely from the grip exerted on him by the Church man. Stéphane continued to frequent him, including with his sons. It was even Roger Matassoli who married him in 1994, in the chapel of Saint-André-Farivillers, at the entrance to the enclosure of the presbytery where Matassoli lived 42 years. Where he abused some of his victims.
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However, he had cut ties with Roger Matassoli after revealing these attacks in 2000 to his wife Sandrine. Then in a dark period of his life, after a divorce, Stéphane finally confides in his father, who puts an end to his days in the village wood in December 2011. A few weeks later, Stéphane in his turn attempts to commit suicide. Isolated, member of a family "in denial", he received visits from one person: Roger Matassoli.
Lunch appointments are becoming regular. "But I never left my son alone with him," defends Stéphane. I had told him that he was a pedophile. Sometimes the older brother of the alleged murderer accompanies them. "He stopped going because he was older and fed up," says Sandrine. One day, he told us that the abbot only had it for Alexandre. "
According to him, a photo of the young man sat on the sideboard of his dining room. "He had clearly set his sights on him," says his mother.
For his parents, it was after Alexander's entry to university, in September 2018, that events precipitated. His bac L, with good mention, in his pocket, Alexandre moved to Amiens and enrolled in the first year of law. He wants to become a lawyer. But money is lacking every day. "The abbot gave him some to pay his debts or unpaid rent," says Sandrine. Financial aid that would not have been free. For Alexander's lawyer, Caty Richard, the young man had to do the bare cleaning in exchange for the priest's home.
For Alexander's mother, these households could have started between 2015 and 2017. He would even have told his girlfriend of the time and his older brother. "But he would have asked them not to tell me anything because he knows I would have reacted. Facts that resonate with paternal history. Stéphane says he cleaned the presbytery of Saint-André-Farivillers at the time, under the priest's eyes and without clothes. "So it's possible that he did the same thing with my son," he breathes.
"I'm sure he had him booze"
Have the reports gone beyond these households? Hard to say. But according to Sandrine, Alexandre had told her a few weeks before the facts that "alcohol could do a lot of things". He tells her that he has already had sexual experience with a man. "When he said that, I immediately thought of the abbot. I'm sure he booed it, she said. And that something happened. Again, Stéphane recognizes himself in this hypothesis. "He used to make kids drink. It was the case for me. "
After having failed his partials, from the first year, the story accelerates. Alexandre ends up leaving Amiens and returns to live with his mother in May 2019. Between that date and the day of the murder, Alexandre would have visited “maybe five times” at Roger Matassoli's, accounts Sandrine.
“At the start, he was very happy to go there because the abbot, as he called him, taught him to drive. He told us that he had even promised him his car when he died. But as he goes along, he doesn't seem to have wanted to see him anymore. “Once, he had turned off his phone for a week. When he turned it back on, he showed me: he had a dozen calls from the abbot. "
In September, this is the breaking point. "One evening he came back and in his eyes, it looked like something terrible had happened," recalls Sandrine. "Would you tell me if something had happened with him?" She asked him. Alexandre answers that yes and not to worry.
Three days before he hits his father
From that date, his behavior changed. He speaks to himself, hears voices, hits his head against the walls. “One day, I heard two big booms in the basement, says Eric, his stepfather. When I go down, I come across him. I ask him what happened, he tells me nothing . A few minutes before, he had seen him talking to his hands.
This October 15, Sandrine and Eric decide to take her to see a psychiatrist. But Alexandre refuses the proposed treatment. "So I told him he couldn't stay at home," says Sandrine.
Alexandre then returned to live with his father in Beauvais. The situation is getting worse. During the three days preceding the discovery of the priest's corpse, he became more and more violent. Friday, November 1 in the evening, between some incoherent remarks, he struck Stéphane and friends whom he had invited for a dinner, before fleeing.
Saturday morning, Stéphane receives a phone call from the police station. Her son was arrested at downtown McDonald's. In the fast-food restaurant, we still remember this young, somewhat stocky man of about 1.70 m, with brown eyes and an unshaven beard.
"He had already come during the week, he did not seem psychologically very stable," said the official. When Alexander lights a cigarette, he is asked to smoke outside. The tension is growing.
"He was verbally threatening to me and made me understand that we could go fight outside," recalls the manager. The police ended up embarking Alexandre not without difficulty.
"He's lost, he's a very very fragile youngster"
At the police station, we explain to Stéphane, who came to get his son, that he is dangerous for others and for himself. "But there were no other consequences," regrets the father. Once outside, Alexandre flees again. Distraught, Stéphane returns home. At the end of the afternoon, his son came back to knock on his door. He hesitates but ends up opening. Again, an avalanche of punches. With a bloody face, he watches his son leave again. This is the last time he will see it.
Between Saturday evening and Monday noon, Alexandre disappears. He would have hidden in the cellar of the building where his father lives. Witnesses say they saw him go out Monday morning. Difficult then to trace its course to the home of the religious, 25 km further. But after the murder of Roger Matassoli, he was arrested in Val-d'Oise behind the wheel of the former priest's car.
Today, Alexandre says he does not remember anything. "He's lost, he's a very very fragile young man," notes his lawyer. And to add: "We can clearly see that he is a kid: he has beard hair but also acne pimples. "Suffering from delusional puffs at the time of the events, he was declared" inaccessible to criminal sanction "on November 4. After more than six weeks of compulsory hospitalization ordered by the prefect, Alexandre was indicted and detained by decision of a judge on December 26. He finally stayed there for three days, before joining the specially equipped hospital unit (UHSA) located in Lille-Seclin.
"The last victim of Matassoli"
Since the murder, languages have loosened. Several people present themselves as victims of sexual abuse on the part of the priest, some facts even going back to the 1960s.
One thing is certain, Alexander has left behind a destroyed family. His mother first. “When I saw him in the hospital, he was so fragile. The worst thing is to imagine what he did and see it there, like a leaf. A gale and it falls, she says. He was holding my hand, didn't want us to leave. It hurts. "
"It's also very complicated for her brothers and sister," continues Sandrine. We knew he was not well, but from there to do that? Maybe we should have pushed him more to confide in us, let him tell us what he was going through. ” And a father, devoured by the guilt of having let his son meet the man who "ruined [their] life".
They are all trying to find meaning in the terrible gesture of this "sick" son and brother. For his mother, Alexandre will remain above all "the last victim of Father Matassoli". The last, because, 30 years earlier, another victim taken from delusional puffs had committed suicide by throwing himself into the Seine.
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