France: “When I told him no, it was still yes”

The trial of a 38-year-old man accused of regularly raping his teenage daughter and handing her over to strangers, one of whom is also on trial, opened Wednesday before the Var criminal court.

In this case, which in certain aspects recalls that of the Mazan rapes tried in Avignon, the victim, now 18 years old and came to the hearing with a golden retriever made available to her by a victims' assistance association , did not request the closed session.

According to his statements, his father forced him to have frequent sexual relations, without his mother's knowledge, since the age of 13. Alternating between cajoling and threatening, he exercised absolute control over her, monitoring her outings and following her social media accounts on her own phone. Then he began to lead her to other men, often much older, recruited on classified ad sites like Wannonce, where he presented himself as a couple of young adults looking to satisfy a fantasy.

Blindfolded, the young girl had to submit to the desires of these men, in the presence of her father who directed, participated and filmed. Analysis of the father's phone and computer revealed degrading pornographic images of the girl, who appears alone, with her father or other men. She is often in tears, afraid, or even in great distress. “When I told him no, it was still yes,” she told investigators. “I never said a word (…). My brain was in off mode, I was under remote control.”

But, in the summer of 2021, when the victim was 15 years old, her father, who then weighed 160 kg, started hitting her. One evening in August 2021, a few days after more violent beatings and a particularly “sordid” rape, according to the description of an investigator who viewed the video, the teenager ran away from home and was taken into care by a passerby.

The geolocation of one of these videos allowed investigators to identify one of the men recruited by the father. Aged 70, father of six children and employed as a caretaker and gardener at the time of the events, he had relations with the teenager on four occasions. In front of the investigators, he assured that he had no doubt about the story of the young couple coming to satisfy a fantasy.

The father, for his part, mentioned a sentimental relationship with the teenager, maintaining that he had only given in to her advances. After the latter's arrest, the victim initially felt guilty, wondering about his feelings. “At that moment, this father/daughter relationship seemed normal to me. Now (…) I manage to dissociate the two, the dad and what happened,” she explained to the audience. “But I have absolutely nothing to say to him, I’m just angry,” she added, now waiting to be able to “move on to something else”.

The trial is scheduled to last until Friday and the two men each face up to 20 years in prison.

Suspicion of mistreatment or abuse of a child?