Fuvula in her shirt and jeans, she cries out in a hurried cry from the heart: “It was February 6, 2022 at 3 p.m.” She gives her date of birth and specifies that she will be 66 years old “in December.” In her childish voice, she continues at full speed to provide a “correction.” The number of her studio is not the right one. “I have butterflies in my stomach but I came anyway,” says the sixty-year-old after half a day of debates.
It is midday on Tuesday, September 17, the first day of the hearing of a case of rape of a vulnerable person, studied by the departmental criminal court, meeting in Saintes. The alleged events took place on a Sunday in the victim’s apartment, within the Maison-relais de Royan, a residential home with 15 studios managed by the Tremplin 17 association. Having himself occupied the premises for several months, he allegedly forced the victim to perform oral sex, after threatening her and hitting her in the eye.
The sixty-year-old, described by social workers as “sociable but vulnerable who does not see the harm” is accompanied by her tutor from the MSAIS. “Kind, naive”… Everyone says she is incapable of lying. A postulate that Me Melliti, counsel for the accused, will have tried to counter all day, trying to find out from the expert psychologist if the victim was capable of lying. Answer: “she is extremely spontaneous. She is a person who seems authentic to me. The question of lying did not arise” even if “her level of thought is 6-7 years old” and that this age marks “the awareness of truth and lies”.
Residence permit expired
Without filter, the victim says “she was abused in every way”. Financially, materially but also sexually in 2011 in a mobile home on the island of Oléron. The two attackers were sentenced by the criminal court of La Rochelle to eighteen months of imprisonment, partially suspended.
This time, the courts did not reclassify the facts as a crime. The accused risks twenty years of criminal imprisonment. Born in Algeria fifty-six years ago, abandoned by his family at a very young age, he joined France via Spain at the age of 29. Ten years in Paris, ten years in Valencienne… He entered into a civil partnership, without living as a couple, to help a woman with her children. He obtained a residence permit in 2014. The document is valid for ten years. At the hearing, the court discovered that the Udaf, the Algerian’s legal representative since November 2021, had forgotten to apply for a renewal. “The alert system did not work,” explained the guardian in office since May 2024.
The debates do not shed light on the reasons for his arrival in Charente-Maritime. In La Rochelle, he scrapes by, housed by 115. The Tremplin 17 association takes care of him. He occupies emergency accommodation in a residence that accommodates people over 60 in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne. There, he becomes friends with an old lady. They help each other out.
Alcoholic, intrusive, invasive
He meets the daughter of this lady – now deceased, called to testify at the end of the day in a surreal moment, around the impotence or not of the accused. In court, she speaks of friendship and supposes that he was in love. They exchanged kisses, slept naked together, nothing more. In the witness box, she disputes her statement made to the police when she noted the erectile problems of the accused.
Only one thing is clear: the accused’s addiction to alcohol, which caused irreversible damage. His chronic alcoholism prevented him from remaining within the Royan integration structure Trajectoire. At the halfway house, his outbursts deteriorated the atmosphere. The economic and social advisor, called to testify, said that “the community was perhaps not adapted” to the accused. Especially since he was “very intrusive”, “invasive”, inviting himself into people’s homes. One of his two lawyers, Mr. Melliti, repeatedly insisted on the fact that his excesses never resulted in comments or behavior of a sexual nature.
When the alleged rape occurred, there were no professionals in the building. The lady of the house is there during the day, from Monday to Friday. “On Saturdays and Sundays, they are left to their own devices.” And it was precisely that same weekend, on the night of Saturday to Sunday, that a fight took place between the accused and another resident, who came to fight. The next day, Sunday afternoon, the accused burst into the victim’s room, without any obvious link to the fight the day before appearing.
The accused maintains that he does not remember anything. This Tuesday evening, his very disjointed speech only added to the confusion. The proceedings resume this Wednesday at 9 o’clock.
