It took him less than twenty-five minutes to commit his crime. After two days of hearing behind closed doors, the 16-year-old teenager, who admitted to having killed little Rose on April 25, 2023 in Rambervillers (Vosges), was sentenced to 20 years of criminal imprisonment, the maximum sentence, as well as only 20 years of socio-judicial monitoring, in accordance with the prosecution’s requisitions.
When this judgment was announced, the young man had no reaction and responded favorably to the question from the president of the court to find out if he had understood his sentence.
That day, an hour and a half after the alert launched by her parents, worried about no longer seeing her, the body of little Rose-Izabela was discovered, naked in a trash bag, in an apartment in this town. . Aged 15 at the time of the events, the teenager admitted to having lured the child to his mother’s home, claiming that he was going to show her a kitten. He also explained that he took her into the bathroom, before holding her head under water in the bathtub.
“Advances on explanations”
Tuesday June 11, on the first day of the trial, the municipal police officers, the director of investigation and the services which followed the accused teenager testified before the court. If, at the lunch break, he had not yet spoken, he was able to provide some “explanations” by answering the questions put to him in the afternoon.
According to Me David Collot, one of the lawyers for Rose’s family, the teenager admitted on Tuesday, “a little pushed to his limits, that he would probably have masturbated after committing the murder” of the child, ” which would explain why we could have found his sperm on Rose’s sweater.” The sexual dimension of his actions “is an important dimension of his personality”, believes Ms. Virginie Barbosa, lawyer for the Voix de l’enfant association. The suspect affirmed since the beginning of the investigation that “nothing of a sexual nature” had happened with the child.
What the little girl’s parents expect from this trial is “to really get the truth” about the “twenty-two minutes” Rose was in the apartment with the accused, declared Tuesday morning the one of their lawyers, Stéphane Giuranna.
“As we suspected, it was extremely hard (for Rose’s parents). The father left the room at one point, the mother showed a lot of emotion, it was very hard” for them, declared David Collot. “They were still able to hear progress on the explanations” of the accused, he continued.
“Psychologically close” by Francis Heaulme
This Wednesday, June 12, it was the “worrying” profile of the teenager, according to several experts who examined him during the investigation, which was at the center of the debates on Wednesday, with the testimony of several psychiatrists and psychologists. The psychiatric and psychological expertises are “catastrophic, worrying,” Stéphane Giuranna, lawyer for little Rose’s parents, told the press.
“When we ask the experts whether there is an ounce of optimism… There is none, there is nothing,” he continued. “Everyone unanimously says that he is perverted, sadistic, that he will do it again. There is nothing to do. The only thing to do is watch him, lock him up. As a lawyer, I have a hard time hearing that. » An expert, to whom the question was asked during the hearing, declared that the person to whom the teenager is “psychologically closest” is the serial killer Francis Heaulme, reported Me Giuranna.
Tuesday, a first psychiatric expert, “one of the only ones” to have noted the alteration of the young man’s discernment during the acts with which he is accused, was heard by the court, according to David Collot, one of the family’s lawyers of Rose.
“We are not of this opinion, we are rather of the opinion of the other experts (…) who evoke full and complete discernment, corroborated in particular by the unfolding of the facts and the plan which had been designed by the murderer before he takes action,” underlined Me Collot.
A previous conviction
The court also looked into the “dysfunctions” in the monitoring of this minor, placed for a year in a closed educational center in 2022 and then returned to his parents.
“We continue to think that finishing a placement in a closed educational center, which can be more restrictive for a minor, and moving to a placement at home immediately afterwards, was perhaps not the best option to choose, notes Me Collot. The sequence between these two modes of support raises questions. We have had answers, not all of them, and we are not fully convinced. »
The teenager was already convicted in March of rape and sexual assault on two boys aged 11 and 12 in a previous case. One of them declared having been kidnapped and raped by the defendant, then aged 14. The second said he had been the victim of a sexual assault. The victims were allegedly tied to a tree before suffering the acts they denounced.
But he is also the target of a rape complaint, filed last April by a former friend of the suspect. Facts which would have been committed in February 2022 at the boy’s home, a year before Rose’s death.
