Since this Tuesday, November 19 in the morning, a 39-year-old from Toulouse has been on trial before the Aude Assize Court to answer for criminal offenses occurring over the period from October 1, 2017 to October 3, 2018, in Carcassonne. The verdict in this second case of the fall session is expected during the day of Wednesday, November 20.
While he should have appeared freely, after being placed under judicial supervision in March 2019 following more than six months of pre-trial detention, it was ultimately under escort from prison officers that Hervé Massat arrived before the court. Assizes of Aude, this Tuesday, November 19. For the record, he was placed under arrest warrant on Friday, November 15, for not having respected his obligations.
Aged 39, this Toulouse resident is being prosecuted for acts of rape and habitual violence by a spouse, the prevention of which extends from 1is October 2017 to October 3, 2018, in Carcassonne. In the box, the accused appears confident. He says he has nothing to hide and disputes the facts in their entirety. With that little sarcastic smirk. He denies the rapes and explains that the violence he was able to commit on his partner was to calm her down because she was often in crisis. On the night of October 2 to 3, 2018, around 4:30 a.m., it was nevertheless naked, in rue René-Cassin, in Grazailles, hidden under a blanket between two cars, that the Carcassonne police officers went to find the young woman from 19 years old. She is prostrate, sobbing, and has bruises on her arms, legs and face.
I didn't like him and he was weird, but I let him settle
Interviewed at the hospital, she then indicated that she was hit several times by her companion before being raped. But the complainant ended up going back on these statements later, saying that she had not been abused that night, but that her companion had regularly forced her to have sex with anal penetration, from the month of November 2017. The start of a relationship also marked by physical and psychological violence. “Unconsciously, I let it happen. For him, we were a couple… I didn’t like him and he was weird, but I let him settle in”testified the complainant. “Little by little, he showed me who he really was. He is manipulative, a liar, very perverse and violent. Even though I told him no, he still did it! Sometimes I had the impression that I was I was a prostitute. He imposed himself on my life because I was afraid of him and I am still afraid of him. He destroyed me physically and morally. I was no longer. free to do what I wanted…” Today, this still fragile 25-year-old young woman feels extremely guilty. Especially since her son was placed in September 2018 due to his maternal deficiencies, and the climate of danger reigning at home.
In the month I stayed with him, there were fifteen days of ordeal!
During the investigation by President Eric Emmanuelidis, we discovered that the accused adopted the same controlling behavior with his previous partners, but also with those he had after the events. Today he is the father of five children whom he never wanted to recognize. “From the moment I brought him home, he never wanted to leave”explains one of the accused's exes. “He was quite aggressive in our relations, he tried to strangle me. This guy is a big psycho. In the month I stayed with him, there were fifteen days of ordeal! With me, he tried to have a kind of authority, but since I have character…”
There is also this other woman, with whom the accused had a daughter: “It was a disaster. Very quickly I got pregnant, then it went very badly. He didn't work and often asked me for money to buy his weed. It took me a long time to realize that There was something wrong with him.” What is wrong with the accused, the expert psychiatrist Pierre Despla defined it as “a mood disorder of his own, aggravated by his consumption of toxic substances (alcohol, cocaine and cannabis)… What strikes me about him is his family instability. When he was 7 or 8 years old, there was a first break with placement in a foster home. Then he will be picked up by his father, who died in 2015, when he was 9 years old, because his mother, who suffers from bipolarity, is in a psychiatric ward. The expert then speaks of an adolescence when the accused began “to drop out of school by adopting behavioral problems. He will then have a fairly unstable emotional life. He feels victimized by others… Then he adopts a marginal lifestyle”.
The verdict in this case is expected during the day of Wednesday, November 20. The accused faces twenty years of criminal imprisonment.
