Julien Masson, 34, "adult and criminally responsible", could not "ignore that the violence" inflicted on the child "would have fatal consequences", had lamented the Advocate General, during this sordid trial.
This Friday, Yanis' stepfather, who died at the age of five during a punishment in February 2017, was sentenced to 25 years of criminal imprisonment.
His mother, 26, was sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended for not having prevented the murder.
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The martyrs of Yanis and David, two children punished to death, in court
Julien Masson was found guilty of murder and regular violence, and was also sentenced to five years of socio-judicial monitoring with injunction of care, the sentence of the mother, Emilie Inglard, being accompanied by three years of probation, without warrant of committal.
For the "ordeal" suffered by Yanis, who died at 5 years old by a "sad winter night" in 2017 during a punishment, the prosecution had requested a little earlier in the day 28 years of criminal imprisonment against his beau -father, the defense assuring that he had "never intended" to kill.
For the Advocate General, Patrick Leleu, "the intention of homicide, a difficult element in this case, is characterized".
Five years in prison, including 30 months suspended sentence were required against the mother, for not having prevented the crime.
"Pardon for all those who knew Yanis"
"I want to apologize, […] Pardon for all those who knew Yanis", Julien Masson launched, in tears, before the Court withdrew.
"It's not for the trouble" but I would like "that we accept that I did not want to kill him".
The Advocate General for his part listed "the blows", the night walk, "this severe hypothermia", Yanis having "been immersed dressed in the canal" near the hut of Aire-sur-la-Lys where the couple was passing. the weekend.
He stigmatized “the insufficiency, the absence” of explanations from the accused, who only showed the court a “smoke curtain”.
As for the mother, that night of February 5 to 6, she "associated" with this punishment, believing that it "will put (it) the ideas in place" to her son, he continued.
Thursday evening, the main defendant had ended up admitting, on the defensive, his "responsibility" in a death remaining however for him "accidental".
Yanis would have had "several falls" and he would have hit him with a "flash of a flashlight".
According to the investigation, he left the shed around 00:30, a "sinister, frightening" place according to Patrick Leleu, to take the child running along the canal in a temperature of five degrees, to punish him for having made "wee in bed ".
About thirty bruises, some of them old
When help arrived two and a half hours later, Yanis was lying on a jacket, hypothermic and soaked, his body covered with around thirty bruises, some of them old.
According to the autopsy, he succumbed to a head trauma following a severe impact.
Julien Masson assured that he only went out "to look for tobacco" with the child, then mentioned a "futile whim" on his part.
"What he tells us does not correspond, [...] does not explain half of the wounds," responded Me Anne Simar, lawyer for one of the seven civil parties.
"This bed wetting was only a pretext", in a context of tension within the couple, where the child "could be cumbersome", estimated the lawyer of the association Enfance et Partage, Jean-Philippe Broyart.
A few hours before the tragedy, Yanis, "this beaten, unhappy child", had told the accused wanting to return to live with his biological father, he recalled, the psychiatrists seeing it as a possible catalyst for this man "vulnerable to frustration ".
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A conviction for murder would mean "being certain that Julien Masson wanted to kill" which "is not the reality", said one of the defense lawyers, Me Gabriel Duménil.
calling for reclassification as willful violence followed by death.
At the time of deliberating, conjured Me Crespin, lawyer of the association l'Enfant Bleu, "you will not forget Yanis, one of these phantom children, who pass under the radars".
