On the steps of the Orléans courthouse, a “welcome committee” of union and feminist activists announced the color, Tuesday December 3, 2024: “No rapists among doctors, or anywhere else!” »
Sentenced by the Tours criminal court in February 2024 to five years of suspended imprisonment, Nicolas W. committed sexual assaults, the first in 2013 (he was 15 years old), then from 2017 to 2020. Almost each time, he entered by surprise into the bed of his victims, medical students like him. Himself an alcoholic, the victim too, he tried to have a relationship with her. In one case, there was even question of a classification as rape, before all the facts were corrected.
Tall, rather athletic, with dense light brown hair surmounting a collar of beard, Nicolas W. is now 27 years old. Placed in pre-trial detention during the month of September 2020, he has since been sentenced to five years of suspended imprisonment. The prosecution appealed. He intends to obtain detention.
Nicolas W. is still a medical intern. Attached to the University of Limoges, he was assigned to the Toulouse University Hospital. Faced with union outcry, the Occitanie Regional Health Agency has suspended this assignment for the time being.
Brilliant and immature, quick-witted but childish at heart
Everything is in contrast with Nicolas W. Brilliant and immature. Quick-witted but childish at heart. The son of a couple of doctors, he received a strict but loving upbringing. He dreams of following in his parents' footsteps.
Defended by Maître Marc Morin, the victims have difficulty imagining their own future, like that of the defendant. “His lack of honesty is total. We cannot separate the attacker from the doctor”underlines one of them.
Because Nicolas W., against winds, tides and pressures from the world of health, clings to his vocation. “Yes, I want to be a radiologist. It's my project, I put my energy into it, and I will put it into it until the courts tell me that I am unfit for it. »
At the bar, the defendant stands up to the attorney general, just as he takes up the challenge of an oratorical joust with that of the civil parties. The free and informed consent of the patient? The intern knows it by heart. And yet, with female classmates from medical school, against a backdrop of massive alcoholism, he “tried it”…
“I have changed”
“When I was younger, I only thought about myself. But I changed, I worked on what sexual assault was. » If he recognizes that “the victims are the most injured”he doesn't really apologize; at most he evokes them in an innocuous sentence.
For the prosecution, there is no question of the intern escaping detention: he requires five years, including three years in prison and two years of probationary suspension.
In defense, Maître Alain Jakubowicz rejects the idea of “the social death of this boy”, and requests confirmation of the first instance judgment, i.e. five years with a suspended sentence.
The decision will be made on January 14.
