Teacher accused of pedophilia cleared after five years

"I went through five years of hell, for nothing," said the teacher, quoted by the regional daily Le Bien Public.

A teacher, a time suspected of having raped a four-year-old girl, was cleared by the courts in the context of a general dismissal almost five years after the facts, we learned on Wednesday from the Dijon parquet floor.

In November 2016, the girl had recounted having been the victim of touching and had appointed this school teacher who was starting a replacement in her nursery school, located in Genlis (Côte-d'Or).

The man, married and the father of a family, was then imprisoned for five months.

In March, 2017, the investigating chamber of the Dijon Court of Appeal lifted his indictment and placed him under the status of assisted witness.

"A failure of the investigation and the investigation"

DNA analyzes had shown that a tiny stain of semen found in the panties of the little victim belonged to a member of the paternal line. The uncle, the grandfather and the father of the child had all been placed in police custody for a time. But the possibility of a transfer of DNA on the garment in the basket of soiled laundry could never be ruled out by the experts.

The general dismissal order issued by the examining magistrate, both towards the teacher and the parents of the girl, complies with the requisitions of the prosecution. "It is very clearly a failure of the investigation and the investigation, despite the substantial means implemented to succeed," admitted the prosecutor Eric Mathais, quoted by the daily. However, the case could not stop there, a child protection association, which had brought a civil action, having expressed its intention to appeal.