Criminal Court of Indre-et-Loire
His apologies, presented when the last word was left to him, could have been taken as a confession: the criminal court of Indre-et-Loire saw it, at the very least, as a sign of empathy towards the person who accused him.
Jean-Luc C., suspected of rape for two years, was acquitted on Thursday June 27, 2024. The conclusion of a day spent sifting through the facts of the night of July 4, 2022. Given the benefit of the doubt, the thirty-year-old left his 9 m prison cell2 and found freedom in the evening.
In a case at the heart of which consent was questioned at length without reaching certainty, the court found that Jean-Luc C. “did not have the capacity to perceive reluctance on his own if it was not clearly expressed.”
“I should have said no from the start”
The motivation of the decision by the magistrates gives credence to the version of the accused, who assumed the painful digital penetrations and the beginning of a sexual relationship interrupted almost as quickly as it had begun. And refers to the doubt of a crime scene entirely redrawn by a twist that occurred in the first hours of the trial.
“I don’t think I made my disapproval clear, I should have said no from the start. In fact, I did what he asked: he wanted to do the thing, he got what he wanted.”, was able to explain Laurie (1), who appeared before the court by videoconference, from the south of France. His words, with almost two years of hindsight, have abandoned the constraint and surprise at the origin of the investigation. Those told a few minutes after she was found in the middle of the night by a police crew, prostrate under a bus stop in the Tours station area.
Words taken seriously
Placed under reinforced guardianship, suffering from schizophrenia, the thirty-year-old abandoned the anonymity of social networks at the beginning of July 2022 to jump on a train to Touraine. With Jean-Luc C., “I wanted us to meet, like teenagers, to go for a drink, to get to know each other, she explained to the court. We have to talk to become lovers…”
Her romantic escapade, fantasized along the thousand kilometers swallowed up from Occitania, was cut short. Instead of sweet words: denigration and reification, she says. Then a torture that she could not invent. “The court believes her when she says she felt an act of rape”modestly underlines the judgment rendered Thursday evening.
“She explained to us that she did not consent but that she did not know how to say it. Above all, she didn’t have time to agree”had defended the attorney general, Delphine Amacher, in her indictment, before demanding twelve years of criminal imprisonment against the accused. “She didn’t want to, I only understood it when she said it. There was nothing more from the moment she said ‘no'”the person concerned swore several times. The prosecution has ten days to appeal. And open the way to a second trial.
(1) Under enhanced curatorship, the complainant is an adult protected by a judicial measure. His first name has been changed.
