the essential
Originally from the Somme, Jean, 11, spent a week at a summer camp in Brittany. When he returned, he finally confessed his ordeal: three children had hit and harassed him every day. The next day, Saturday August 31, his mother, Cécile Lemaire, filed a complaint for “aggravated violence”.
What was supposed to be an unforgettable summer holiday turned into a nightmare. Returning from summer camp in Brittany on 29 August, Jean, aged 11 and originally from the Somme, came home with his body and face swollen with bruises.
When she finds her son, Cécile is all the more worried because her son remains mute. It is only in the car that she hears Jean explaining to his cousins the ordeal he suffered for a week: every day, he was beaten by three children aged 12 to 13. Cécile then breaks the story on social networks. “I have no explanation from the leaders under the pretext that Jean was not in their group,” she complains in her Facebook post.
“Luckily I do boxing, otherwise they would have raped me”
Slapping, kicking with sneakers and flip-flops, and even punching. This was the ordeal that Jean endured from the time he woke up until he went to bed. The three attackers quickly created a climate of terror: “You have two minutes to wash yourself or we’ll hit you.” To escape this violence, he preferred not to shower every day. His black eye came from a fight one night at a party when Jean, passing by his harassers, was jostled.
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His beatings were accompanied by unheard-of psychological violence. When he asked the hosts for permission to call his mother, they allegedly told him: “If it’s to complain, there’s no point.” According to Cécile Lemaire, her son was even threatened with death: “In any case, if you talk, you’re a dead man.”
But the violence didn’t stop there. One day, his attackers tried to force him to get on all fours and take off his pants. Terrified, he took refuge in a bush to escape their clutches, thus missing dinner. Once again, no one noticed his absence. “Luckily I do boxing, otherwise they would have raped me,” he told the police during his hearing.
His mother filed a complaint the next day.
The very next day, Cécile Lemaire immediately consulted a doctor and then went to the emergency room on August 30 to get a second medical opinion. On August 31, she filed a complaint with the Poix-de-Picardie gendarmerie (Somme) for “aggravated violence”. This Tuesday, September 3, Jean was taken care of by a forensic doctor to establish a new certificate. “My son is psychologically scarred,” she confides, specifying that despite everything, Jean started middle school as planned, although deeply affected by the events.
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The boy’s mother also sent an email to the organization Éducation Jeunesse Aisne (EJ’N), mandated by the Somme Sud-Ouest community of communes (CC2SO) to organize the camp. In this message, she demands explanations for the lack of supervision and the incompetence of the supervisors, especially since her son and several children had alerted the leaders about the situation.
An internal investigation is underway
Were there not enough facilitators? Jérôme Vasseur, director of the EJ’N association, assures us that they were not. “When there are 100 children, you need at least 9 educators. There were almost double that number.”
The organization is, however, taking the case very seriously and an internal investigation has been opened to shed light on this affair. “The child’s injuries are there. The photos, as we can see, were taken as the child got off the bus when he was returning from his stay. We are checking the elements that will allow us to move forward. But to our knowledge, there has been no report of this mistreatment by the child,” she told the Telegram.
For its part, the Somme Sud-Ouest community of communes also reacted to the seriousness of the situation: “We are deeply shocked by this testimony and take this situation with the utmost seriousness. As soon as we became aware of this situation, we contacted the family concerned to express our support and gather initial information. We are currently asking families in our area whose children participated in the camp to gather their feelings about their children’s stay.”
