Amid the bundles of closely-typed paperwork and legal tomes, the lawyers flourish and stab their ballpoint pens at scrawled sketches of family trees on their open notebooks.
The scribbled charts are helping them to keep track of the dips and twists of some of the most distressing and gruesome stories of depravity ever to be brought to light in a French court.
That France’s biggest ever criminal trial should be taking place in the beautiful Loire valley town of Angers, famed for its Cointreau, its heritage and its meandering river, is as inexplicable as the horror unfolding on the notebooks.
Sixty-six residents are facing charges that include child sex abuse, incest and pimping their own children for not much more than the price of a carton of cigarettes.
The 45 alleged victims are children aged from six months to 12 years old. The accused are their mothers, fathers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles. Last week at Angers assizes court, it took three days for four clerks to read out the 430-page charge sheet against the 39 men and 27 women. The charges include abusing 26 girls and 19 boys during at least 100 orgies, some of which included sado-masochistic sex games.
Marine — not her real name — was mentioned time and again. From the age of seven, she was allegedly raped by her grandfather, Philippe, now 59, her father, Franck, and two dozen others. Franck, a 36-year-old former drifter, and his wife, Patricia (32) allegedly prostituted Marine, her younger sister, Inès, and their little brother, Vincent, in return for small amounts of money and cartons of cigarettes. As an inducement for playing ”doctors and nurses” or ”the lock and key game”, the children were said to have been offered a ”first prize” of camping trips by the nearby River Loire.
”When you try to draw a family tree for Marine, who we believe was assaulted by 25 adults, you just run out of space on a sheet of A4,” said lawyer Alain Fouquet.
The case, which began in earnest on Thursday, is due to hear evidence from 225 witnesses. By the time it ends — at the earliest in mid-July — it is likely to have raised critical questions about the way in which France’s obsession with secrecy effectively protects re-offending paedophiles. The country seems to be greeting the horrific details of the crimes with disbelief verging on denial. In Angers, former neighbours of Franck and Patricia claim not to have known them.
”Nobody in their right mind can identify with the horrors we are hearing about. You cannot believe these things were done by human beings. It’s as though those people were from another world,” one resident said.
Franck and Patricia met at a hostel for the homeless in the city. Brought up in institutions and considered ”mentally deficient” in reports, Franck can neither read nor write. He was one of Philippe’s three children from a first marriage. It ended in alcoholism and violence and the alleged rape of Franck’s younger sister, Lydia, when she was six years old.
In 1988, when Franck was 19, he went to live in Marseille where his father, by then remarried to a woman who gave him a further two children, had found a job as a caretaker. His second wife discovered Philippe raping one of his sons. Philippe went to jail for 13 years.
After serving his sentence, Philippe returned to Angers in 2001 to live with Franck, his wife Patricia and their three children, Marine, Inès and Vincent. Asked by Judge Eric Maréchal why he invited his father — who had raped him — into his home, Franck answered: ”I was stupid. I wanted him to get to know my children.”
By the time Philippe moved in, it seems a cycle of incest, paedophilia and procurement had been established. It was not long before Philippe raped his seven-year-old granddaughter, Marine. ”I know it’s not normal,” Philippe told the court, ”and I knew that by doing it I would go back to prison. But I had to do it.”
When Judge Maréchal responded: ”But you’re her grandfather,” Philippe said: ”What is it to be a grandfather? I don’t know. If I am honest I do not love any of my children. I don’t care about them. I do not know my grandchildren or even some of my children. I was in jail.” The judge then turned to Franck and asked him how he felt: ”I felt disgusted. He is a fucking bastard. Only shit comes out of him.”
Screaming, shouts and fainting in the courtroom marked the start of the trial, as several defendants learnt for the first time which of their co-defendants had betrayed them to the police. ”Bastard. I’ll get you in the [prison] exercise yard,” screamed one man to another as he heard details from the charge sheet read out in open court. He was brought under control by police officers ringing the defendants in the courtroom, specially built for the occasion at a cost of 1-million euros.
One woman defendant urinated in her seat when allegations against her were read out. Another woman went into shock. A third woman, a witness who is pregnant was taken away and excused.
The 66 defendants answer the charges against them in monosyllabic terms. At times, they seem unaware of the gravity of the accusations against them. On Friday, during her character interview, Patricia, who is accused of cruelty and admits procuring her own and other children for paedophile acts, was asked by Franck’s lawyer what she saw as her failings as mother. She answered: ”I was not great at cleaning, and I smoke.” The lawyer asked: ”Is that all?. She answered: ”I cannot think of anything else.” Patricia claimed in pre-trial questioning to have been raped by her father. But on Friday the prosecutor, citing dates, suggested she fabricated the rape to attract the jury’s sympathy.
Philippe, Franck and Patricia’s story is typical, rather than exceptional, among the defendants. Philippe’s 45-year-old sister, Nathalie, claims that one of her other brothers, Patrick, raped her as a child. Nathalie — who is accused of failing to report attacks on her children — also claims that her daughter, Armelle, born in 1997, was raped by someone described as ‘Mr Red’, whom she suggested was Franck dressed as Father Christmas.
The investigating magistrates consider Franck to be one of four key suspects. If found guilty he faces several terms of life imprisonment for allegedly raping his own three children, for raping two other minors repeatedly, for sexually assaulting others and — a charge he admits — for procurement of minors. Lawyer Pascal Rouiller, who is acting for five of the accused said the families of the defendants have much in common. ”They’re from the fourth world. More than half of these people grew up starved of affection, often in large extended families, with violence and sexual abuse, alcohol and poor or non-existent education.”
However, there are also suggestions that more upstanding members of Angers’ society — who might have paid large sums of money to the four main defendants — may be missing from the list of the accused. In statements quoted in the charge sheet, ”smart” men and women wearing suits are said to have watched or taken part in orgies. It is also stated that video films and Polaroid photographs were taken during orgies, including footage of a woman wearing a black latex S&M balaclava and of men with tattoos and piercings who are not among the defendants. But this evidence has not been found in police searches. So far, prosecutors have preferred to refer to a ”clan” operation rather than a paedophile ”ring” but, in an unusual step, which suggests magistrates believe more evidence will be found, the investigation remains open while the trial proceeds.
The children — 40 of whom are in care and five are with relatives — will not testify in open court. Videos will be shown of their testimonies.
And, in a move to protect the identities of the children, Judge Maréchal has closed the hearing to the public and imposed reporting restrictions that include changing all the victims’ first names and omitting their surnames and those of the defendants.
Christian Gillet, the local head of social services, said helping the victims to mature into stable adults will be a challenge. ”All of them have become human beings without boundaries or a sense of right and wrong.” – Guardian Unlimited Â