“I have never been violent towards young people,” Julien M., 44, repeated on the stand, assuring that he was “not an animal”.
Accused by several minors of physical violence – including punches and strangulation – he said he had only carried out “reframing” on sometimes “difficult” young people.
“To be told that I slapped a young person, yes, but blows, no, never,” insisted the defendant, his face red, alternating between hesitant responses, made up of “I don’t know anymore,” and disconcerting coldness, during his five hours of interrogation.
However, numerous episodes of brutality have been reported by victims, scenes that are often shocking and particularly painful to hear.
Like in May 2017, when Mathias, aged 14, said he was grabbed by the throat by Julien M., who was heavily intoxicated at the time. The latter would have pulled down his pants, before urinating on him.
“It’s not human.”
“I was drunk and I don’t remember. If I did it, if I urinated on him, I apologize,” he simply said, in response to the unbearable .
A response that surprised the president of the correctional chamber, Christophe Geoffroy: “How, even when drunk, does an adult end up urinating on a child?”
“It’s not human,” he finally blurted out.
On the civil parties’ bench, Mathias is in tears.
In a chilling video filmed by two teenagers who had just been assaulted and broadcast Tuesday at the hearing, Julien M. is also accused by these two young people of having squeezed the testicles of one of them through his pants. “We were massacred,” we can hear.
Another humiliation, that experienced by one of the young people, grabbed by the head, plunged to the height of the toilet bowl and flushed, for not having been “clean enough”.
Here again, the defendant sweeps it all aside, despite the accounts of several witnesses.
Faced with all the accusations of violence, including an episode of threatening with a knife, he held the same line of defense, repeating over and over to minimize them that they were nothing other than “reframings”.
Julien M. also rejected the stories of drug overdose.
For the sake of profit, he co-founded the “Childhood and Well-Being” structure, to which dozens of children were entrusted between 2010 and 2017, for sums which would amount to at least 630,000 euros over seven years.
Julien M. did not hesitate to boast of an “outside the box” status, while he is also being prosecuted for having placed minors in unworthy accommodation, working secretly in an organized gang and using forgeries.
“There is no search for credibility,” criticized Me Jean Sannier, lawyer for civil parties, who denounced “random amnesia”.
“Trash”
The other founder of the structure, Bruno C., must be heard on Wednesday.
In this trial, eighteen people appear before the criminal court until Friday.
But no head of child welfare will be judged, despite the alert made by one of its educators and mentioned by the president on Tuesday, concerning an episode of whipping on a young person and a lack of approval.
During this difficult day for the victims, most often seemed devastated by the statements made on the stand.
One of these young people prefers to put things into perspective when leaving court. “I don’t care what he says. He’s a trash talker, what he says goes in one ear and out the other. “But he has to pay for what he says did. No child should ever go through this again.”
