a former professor at the University of Nantes sentenced to 8 months in prison

Le Figaro Nantes

A teacher from the University of Nantes, suspended in November 2023 after the revelation of his actions, was sentenced Monday to eight months in prison with a simple suspended sentence. This 51-year-old man was on trial before the Nantes criminal court for voyeurism. In November and December 2021, François L. filmed under the skirts of customers in shopping centers in Loire-Atlantique but also in Vendée. Working in the Applied Foreign Languages ​​(LEA) department of the Nantes faculty, he had also filmed the underbelly of certain students in the classroom.

His process was revealed at the end of 2021, after being arrested by security agents at Leclerc Atlantis, in Saint-Herblain (near Nantes). That day, he filmed under the skirt of a customer without her knowledge, placing a phone in a shopping bag. He was fined 500 euros. At the time of his altercation with the security guards, his phone had been damaged voluntarily according to the investigators, unintentionally according to the person concerned. However, more than a year later, the national scientific police service in Écully (near Lyon) managed to exploit the telephone. 29 videos featuring films of private parts had been discovered. The classrooms displayed in the images made it possible to identify three students, who did not testify on the stand, unlike their former teacher.

“Sorry to have committed these acts”

“The first thing I would like to say is that I am sorry that I committed these acts, especially at the university”began the suspended teacher but still paid by the university. Loquacious, he sought to justify himself, evoking at the time a complicated personal and professional situation. The work climate was “overwhelming”and personally, his ex-partner, whom he wanted to leave after meeting another woman, deprived him of his children.

“I lost my footing, I lost my pedals”continued this father of four children from two different unions, speaking of a “symbolic act of regaining control”. Vague elements, making the president come off her hinges, not really managing to understand the link between her personal difficulties and the fact of going to film under women’s skirts. “I did it to exist”continued the defendant, already convicted in 2017 for acts of violence, ensuring that he was not “in a form of rut”. “I was in deep boredom and I no longer existed.”

“We are in the dark”

“Mr L. was at the start of the hearing rather inclined to direct us towards peripheral things which contribute nothing to the case”commented the prosecutor, also not understanding much of the explanations. “I wonder if Mr. L. is not deliberately going in circles”he asked himself. “Today I have not heard anything from him about his approach and possible attraction of the private parts of women taken without his knowledge. We have no information, we are in the dark.”he added, requesting an eight-month suspended prison sentence and a ban on professional teaching activity for five years.

During his pleading, Maître Cabioch, defender of the defendant, questioned the interest of such a sentence of ban on teaching when a definitive ban had already been pronounced against him by an additional court. The lawyer was heard since the judge did not order a ban on practicing professional activity “to the extent that you already have a definitive ban on teaching by disciplinary decision”.

Taking up medical observations, Maître Cabioch argued that the psychiatric and psychocriminological dangerousness of his client, followed by a psychologist, had been ruled out. No impairment of discernment was noted. He is in a “real guilt and moral pain”. Likewise, while the relaxed professor appeared for “voyeurism by a person abusing the authority given to him by his position” in the student affair, M^e Cabioch requested that the facts be reclassified, believing that his actions were not linked to his function. A request that was not heard. The sentence handed down is “warning penalty” which can be revoked if the convicted person commits a new offense within five years.