The facts being for the large majority prescribed, the man now aged 86 had escaped the Assize Court. Tried by the criminal court of Montbéliard (Doubs) for sexual assault on minors, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, three years of which were suspended, and a fine of 10,000 euros.
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The Montbéliard criminal court (Doubs) sentenced an 86-year-old man on Thursday January 23, 2025 to five years in prison, three of which were suspended, for a whole series of sexual assaults on minors. The defendant appeared on January 9 and the judgment was reserved.
The facts are mostly prescribed. The first dates back to the early 1970s, the most recent date from 2009. And the whole affair almost never came to light. A first complaint was filed in 2021, but closed without further action. Another filed in 2023 still pushed the gendarmes to deepen their investigations. What they discovered is beyond imagination.
Touching, sexual assault, rape, corruption of minors, many children and adolescents were abused by the octogenarian in a small village of 200 inhabitants in the Pays de Montbéliard. This former local elected official, “copy” according to its administrators and who owned “a certain charisma”worked over a period of almost 40 years with young girls and boys in his town. The youngest of his victims was just five years old.
-“It is rare to see a man who, over so many years, will thus ravage childhoods”underlined at the hearing the lawyer of one of the complainants, according to l'Est-Républicain. “We are talking about criminal acts”recalled the president of the court, who was surprised by the silence which protected the defendant for so long.
Given the seriousness of the facts, Jean-Claude D. should normally have been referred to the Assize Court. But given the age of the accused, the victims and their families accepted that the file be “corrected”, to avoid months, even years of proceedings and a hypothetical trial.
The man was also absent during the hearing 15 days ago. His state of health is not compatible according to a doctor. In writing, he denied the rape accusations. He barely recognized inappropriate gestures towards certain victims. As reported by Est-Républicain, the man spoke of his own childhood at the orphanage in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) where he allegedly suffered abuse. He himself was also allegedly abused by a priest in his youth. The expert psychiatrist who examined him described a man “with a pedophilic and perverted personality”.
Five years of imprisonment had been requested against him. The court followed these requisitions, but attached the sentence to a three-year suspended sentence. “It will be up to the Sentencing Judge to set the terms of adjustment of these two years in view of the very fragile state of health of the condemned person”specifies to France 3 Franche-Comté Paul-Edouard Lallois, public prosecutor in Montbéliard. He was also fined 10,000 euros.
The man will also have “the obligation to compensate all victims”. Eight of them had become civil parties. “Their requests for damages have not yet been formulated by their lawyers, who have previously requested expert opinions to assess their damagefurther specifies Paul-Edouard Lallois, expert opinions which were therefore ordered by the court as part of the civil action.”
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