The teenager suspected of the murder of little Rose, five years old, last year in Rambervillers (Vosges), is tried behind closed doors by the Epinal children’s court, Tuesday and Wednesday, three months after a first conviction for rape and sexual assault in another case.
The hearing opened shortly before 9 a.m. on Tuesday in the presence of Rose’s family and the teenager’s parents. Journalists were forced to leave the room before the start, with the hearing in the children’s court taking place behind closed doors.
Several police officers inside and outside the courtroom were securing the scene when the teenager arrived in the prison transport.
Get the truth
What the little girl’s parents want “is really to get the truth (…) There are 22 minutes when he is in the apartment with Rose, they want to know what happened during those 22 minutes. Because 22 minutes is a long time for a 5-year-old girl,” their lawyer, Me Stéphane Giuranna, told the press.
“For them, these 22 minutes are excruciating because they can imagine everything, they really want to know,” he continued.
On April 25, 2023, less than an hour after her parents reported Rose’s disappearance, her body was discovered naked in a trash bag, in an apartment in this town of 5,000 inhabitants.
The teenager, aged 15 at the time of the events, admitted to having brought the girl to his house, claiming that he was going to show her a kitten. He admitted, during a reconstruction two months after the events, to having kept the child’s head underwater in the bathtub.
Suspected touching
Traces of semen were also found on Rose’s clothes, although the teenager has claimed since the beginning of the investigation that “nothing of a sexual nature” had happened that April day with the child. .
In an autopsy report, the experts noted “the absence of traumatic vulvovaginal traces and the anal verge”, while estimating that “this does not make it possible to eliminate touching”.
But another expert report then noted that the little girl’s genetic profile had been found “in a very small minority on the testicles and penis of the accused” but also on his pants and underwear, according to a Source close to the case.
Already convicted
In a previous case, the teenager was already sentenced in March to three years in prison, one of which was suspended, by the Epinal children’s court for rape and sexual assault on two minors. The events, which occurred in February 2022, predated Rose’s death.
According to Vosges Morning, the teenager, who was then aged 14, had asked three children, aged 9, 11 and 12, to follow him to an isolated grove. The two oldest were allegedly tied to a tree before being sexually assaulted.
Placed in a closed educational center outside the department for a year after these events, the teenager then returned to live with his mother in Rambervillers, shortly before Rose’s murder.
Malfunctions
Me Virginie Barbosa, counsel for the association La Voix de l’Enfant, explains that the association’s position during this trial is to “see where things went wrong, to highlight the dysfunctions. It’s special because we have a minor victim, and an perpetrator who is also a minor.”
The question of monitoring the adolescent will have to be debated at the hearing. “He comes out (of the closed educational center, editor’s note), and because there is no place in the IME (Medico-Educational Institute), we are going to return him to his parents’ home,” points out Me Barbosa.
The teenager is also the subject of another complaint for acts of rape and sexual assault also committed in February 2022, we learned on Friday. A preliminary investigation is still underway on this subject, Epinal public prosecutor Frédéric Nahon told AFP.
