The affair had moved the whole of France. On October 20, 2023, a baby a few hours old was found in a buried trash can in the Sarah-Bernhardt district of Rennes. Alerted by the cries, a resident alerted the firefighters, who were able to save the child, baptized Noah Briac Alban by the caregivers who welcomed him. The parents of the very young child were quickly found using their DNA, the father already being known to the justice services. Quickly exonerated, this man from Mayotte and aged 23 had simply mentioned “sexual relations” with the child's mother, while denying being aware of the pregnancy of the minor he was seeing.
Also from Mahor, the teenager, then aged 17, had actually admitted to having given birth alone at her home, before losing her footing and throwing her child into a buried container in her neighborhood. She was indicted for attempted murder and placed in pre-trial detention. The young woman had to bear sole responsibility for this tragedy, left to popular vindictiveness for having committed this act. In December, she finally recognized her child, who had been taken care of by Child Welfare.
“I understood that there were things behind it”
The affair could, however, experience a significant twist. Released from her pre-trial detention at the start of the school year, the young woman is now hosted in an educational and integration placement establishment (EPEI). She should be heard in the coming days by the police, we learned 20 Minutesconfirming information from Parisian. This time, it is as a victim that she is summoned. Her lawyer filed a complaint against the father of the child in January 2024, in order to denounce the acts of rape, sexual assault, domestic violence and blackmail of which her client was allegedly the victim. “I immediately noticed that there was a real difficulty in perceiving her body, in the way she was shifting away from her physical envelope. We felt that there was a split. I understood that there were things behind it. It was reminiscent of attitudes that can be found in victims of sexual assault or rape,” explains his lawyer Me Amina Saadaoui.
After long months of waiting, notably due to a change of prison, the young woman will finally be able to be heard and deliver her version of the facts. The one she was able to deliver to her lawyer but also to the health professionals and educators who follow her. “She denounces rape, sexual assault, habitual violence by a spouse but also threats. We told him: if you don’t do that, I’m going to hit you, assault you,” continued Me Amina Saadaoui.
Sex videos as a weapon of blackmail
The lawyer also filed a complaint for “intrusion into privacy by capturing private images of a sexual nature”. “It was a form of blackmail that was being put in place, with the threat of revealing these images.” The young woman first verbalized these elements, before writing them down, describing the sexual relations imposed by this man. Without her parents, without close friends, she was left to her own devices in Rennes and had to manage this pregnancy alone without any follow-up.
For his lawyer, these facts “in no way excuse what happened” but allow “to better understand this act, to be more enlightened”. “We can understand how we were able to get this far,” believes the Rennes lawyer. The difficulty for the complainant and her counsel will be to provide proof of what she is denouncing. Elements which always prove crucial in denunciations of domestic violence or marital rape where the materialization of the facts is very often complicated.
A strategy to defend yourself?
The defense could also consider that the young woman is trying to escape from the accusations of attempted murder to which she is the subject. “We have no reason to doubt my client’s words. I have before me a young girl with an extremely fragile psychological profile. I don't see her at all capable of trying a strategy to minimize her responsibility. I don’t think she has the psychological resiliency,” replies the lawyer.
