A former recreation center leader, who worked in nursery schools in Toulouse, is being tried on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 September for several sexual assaults on pupils under his responsibility, as well as for having filmed them naked.
The defendant, aged 29, is suspected of having sexually assaulted eight children, two of whom have not been identified, from 2016 to 2023, in two nursery schools in Toulouse and a third in Saint-Jean, north of Toulouse, where he worked as a group leader.
“We think we can trust education”
“We think we can trust education, and in fact, we realize that even within the confines of an establishment, we cannot trust, we have to stay on the lookout,” Sophie, mother of one of the victims, told AFP, hoping that the defendant “will be severely sentenced.”
Myriam Guedj Benayoum, lawyer for this mother, and representing several children in this trial, hopes for “a collective awareness”.
Arrested on July 17, 2023, for “possession, recording and export of images of a minor of a child pornography nature”, the former host, aged 28 at the time of the events, filmed the children he was looking after, according to the indictment file.
Some of the 82 videos found on his phone, filmed between August 21, 2021 and July 17, 2023, showed children undressing, while one of them showed the host “insistently passing a wipe over a child’s genitals” or in another video, the defendant “pat their genitals over their panties”.
“Kisses on the mouth”
Nearly 200 photos of children aged four to eight, taken in schools or leisure centres, were also found on the presenter’s phone.
Research on the latter, at the time of his arrest, brought to light a sexual assault, dating back to 2016, on a 5-year-old girl who testified to “kisses on the mouth” from the presenter.
In this case, 79 victims have joined the civil proceedings. The hearing, which began at 9 a.m., is being held in the chamber of the appeal court of the Toulouse criminal court due to the number of minor victims.
- BFMTV.com
