An evening between neighbors degenerates in Urville-Nacqueville: a man accused of rape in court

In May 2016, a minor 17-year-old, who we will call Ophélie, spent the evening at a neighbor’s house in Urville-Nacqueville (Manche), accompanied by her boyfriend. An evening of joints and alcohol to lose all bearings. At 11 p.m., Ophélie’s boyfriend decides to go home, he works the next day, but she prefers to stay to have fun. She therefore finds herself alone with two adults in her fifties: Jérôme, and his partner, Marie, whom she did not really know.

” We stop “

Very quickly, the fun takes a more than libertine turn. Marie sits on the ground and Ophélie is invited to straddle her, a position that Marie takes advantage of to caress the young girl’s breasts. With the help of alcohol and cannabis, it’s all fun and games. Ophelia is “ euphoric»: she subscribes to the adult’s requests by responding to caresses with caresses and kisses on the mouth.

Behind, leaning on a bench, Jérôme, “drunk”, titillated by the young girl’s buttocks, pulls down his pants, caresses the anatomy offered to his eyes, and inserts a finger into the teenager’s anus. Shocked, not expecting to be “used” in this way, Ophélie suddenly begins to cry and begs Jérôme. Marie, alerted, said: ” We stop ! » a “stop” which puts an end to his companion’s impulse, with regret.

The next morning, Jérôme goes to Ophélie’s house. She is alone, her boyfriend has gone to work. Jérôme tells her that she forgot her phone at home and invites her to come and get it. Why didn’t he bring her back?She follows him. Ophélie says that Jérôme, having locked her door, took her by the arm to lead her to his room. There, he tried to pull down her pants and insert his finger. A story that Jérôme disputes.

She filed a complaint two years later

Ophélie waited almost two years before file a complaint . How to explain this delay? Afraid of not being believed, she who, because of her drug addiction, was considered to be talking nonsense? The day after the events, she had nevertheless mentioned the evening to her father, but in an evasive manner, simply saying of her neighbors: “They abused me. » The father went to knock on Jérôme’s door, in vain.

The matter remained there. It was only after her breakup with her then-boyfriend that she became more specific about the sexual acts her neighbors performed on her.

Heard in January 2019, she admitted that during this evening, the caresses on her breasts from Jérôme’s friend whom she now saw as an old woman ” disgusting ” had disturbed her, to the point of no longer being able to react. She believed that Marie, Jérôme’s friend, had helped him rape her. She thought about that evening all the time. She said she no longer trusted old people and when she saw a “guy with a mustache”, she revived the fear of meeting a potential rapist.

A girl in distress

Ophélie was barely 20 years old when psychologist of the Good Saviorwhere she was hospitalized at the alcohol center met her in connection with this affair. She had found a particularly young girl vulnerable, physically markedAt dark life journey since childhood troubled by the separation of her parents at the age of 13, and since then, has been engulfed in drugAnd the alcohol, from suicide attempt to suicide attempt as a headlong flight towards death. Furthermore, her companion was not a support for her: she responded to his physical violence with scarifications, she put herself in danger. She has never been protected.

The investigation into her situation revealed that she consumed quantities of cannabis, ecstasy, methamphetamine which she mixed with antidepressant medications and alcohol… In short, a young girl in deep psychological distress.

An ugly duckling

Curious man that Jerome . Graying, walking with difficulty, he looks older than his 63 years. He had a stroke, he underwent several operations, he suffered from tachycardia. He is the only one to report to the courts on the evening of May 2016: Marie, his accomplice died of cancer in 2019.

He is the ninth in a family of ten children living very modestly in Teurthéville-Bocage of whom, he says, he is the “ugly little duckling” that we don’t hang out with, because he has not, like his brothers and sisters, built his life in a positive way, because he has sunk into alcoholand that he had problems with the law to the point of being imprisoned, spending three months in a cell in the Cherbourg remand center.

Married twice, divorced twice, he had two daughters with his second wife, for whom he never paid alimony, called to order twice, then incarcerated for family abandonment .

He hasn’t had any contact with his daughters for 15 years. As for his successive wives, they have more than mixed, even painful memories of him. The first, married after six years of living together with him, discovered another man after the marriage, violent, threatening to the point of grabbing her by the throat, threatening her with a chainsaw in his hand, capable of preventing her from see his family. She said she was afraid for her life. She admits to still being afraid of him today.

As for the second, the mother of his daughters, she ended up fleeing “the repeated shouting matches” and her alcoholism.

The accused’s sexual demands

If in terms of sexual relations, the girls’ mother says that Jérôme behaved normally, the first wife remembers that he was very demanding of all possible sexual practices, that he was manipulator and played suicide blackmail if she didn’t give in. “Spousal rape didn’t exist at the time,” she says bitterly.

In May 2016, these requirements were no longer met. He wondered about his ability to get an erection. The situation of what he described as “collective thing that has gone adrift”offered him an opportunity, to him who doubted his virility. He took advantage of it without scruple, the prohibitions dulled by his alcoholism not hindering his impulse.

He is accused of rapein this casedigital penetration. He faces 15 years of criminal imprisonment.

Verdict in the afternoon of this Friday.

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