Between 2010 and 2017, around twenty children were placed by Northern child welfare in families who did not have approval. While the trial of the 18 defendants opened on Monday, the lawyers of the civil parties want to denounce the slowness of justice.
Punching, strangulation, forced labor… Five young people will be able to recount the ordeal they endured from 2010 to 2017 in their host family. This Monday, October 14, the trial of 18 people opened in Châteauroux (Indre) for mistreatment of children in care.
Between 2010 and 2017, these children were placed by child welfare (ASE) in the North in families who did not have approval. Around twenty of them testified to serious and repeated violence – punches, kicks, whips, strangulations, drug overdoses for years -, most often carried out by two men.
“Be recognized, listened to”
This Monday for the first day of the trial, five made the trip to the Châteauroux criminal court. Among them, Mathias, placed in a family without approval in 2017. With this trial, he hopes to be “recognized, listened to, understood”. “
“We are all happy to be here. For all of us young people, it does us good. (…) It will bring us happiness and strength. Many young people, we have no news of “There are around sixty known young people and there are five of us”, he adds to BFMTV.
Therefore, be listened to, but also denounce the slowness of justice in this case, as Jean Sannier, lawyer for the civil party, explains. “How can you, when you are 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, understand that you have to wait until you are 15, 16 or 23 years old for justice to finally deign to turn to your case?”, denounces the lawyer.
Before adding: “It’s seven years of suffering and waiting that we want to denounce today. The time has come for justice, but can we really talk about justice?”
Four days of trial
In all, 18 people are on the dock (19 were dismissed but one of them died during the procedure). Among the accused, two men are the main perpetrators of the violence, Julien M. and Bruno C.
But many wonder about the absence of prosecutions against the ASE du Nord, which continued its partnership with people who do not have approvals, despite numerous reports.
“We would have liked the ASE to be there to express itself but it is not there, it has not been there from the beginning,” regrets Myriam Guedh-Benayoun, victims’ lawyer.
The trial is expected to last four days.
