Murder and rape in Rostrenen: images of unbearable violence broadcast in court

Accused of the murder and rape of a 60-year-old woman in Rostrenen in June 2021, a 34-year-old man from Romania has been appearing before the Côtes-d’Armor Assize Court since Friday, June 28, 2024.

A difficult childhood in poverty

His childhood has been mentioned and it can be said that it was far from happy. He grew up in a large family, with about ten brothers and sisters in a small village in Romania.

At the age of 10, he was forced to leave school: school books were paid for and his parents could not afford the cost.

They live in a home without electricity, the accused is often barefoot and regularly eats only one meal a day.

Victim of child sexual abuse

Around the age of six, he was sexually abused twice by two different individuals. These events were not made public, he confided in his mother: his relatives reportedly asked him not to talk about it.

From the age of 13 or 14, he worked, first in his native country, then in Greece and finally in Brittany, where he arrived in 2019. He was employed in a poultry collection company.

In the dock, he answers the president through an interpreter present at his side. He immediately admits to having killed the victim.

His relatives heard in Romania

The accused is said to be psychologically fragile following a blow to the head with a baseball bat several years ago in Romania.

His relatives noticed a change in his behavior after this attack. He was reportedly hospitalized for behavioral problems, and an alcohol addiction was also noted on this occasion.

Suicide attempts are recurrent among the accused

A first attempt in Romania would be the first in the series. Indeed, once he arrived in Brittany, a second attempt took place in 2020, one day when he had been drinking heavily. It was then during his pre-trial detention in the context of this case that the accused allegedly tried to hang himself twice in front of his fellow prisoners.

The summary of the facts

On the afternoon of June 5, 2021, the accused “by chance” met the victim whom he did not know.

She comes home from shopping, he offers to help her, she invites him to have coffee at her place.

They talk for almost two hours. He leaves the place and goes home. He consumes alcohol, a bottle of wine and beers. Added to this is a shot of “Seresta”. Around 10 p.m., he returns to the house of the woman who will become his victim.

Things are getting out of hand

The accused asks to go upstairs, the motive is unclear. He wants sexual relations, she refuses. She receives a first blow and falls to the ground. Seeing that she grabs her phone, he hits her again. Then, he undresses her and proceeds to touch her of a sexual nature, digital penetrations and attempts at penetration with his penis. These acts are interspersed with new blows.

He left the premises around three in the morning and went to the house of some neighbours who were out partying. He banged on the window. When they opened it, he said spontaneously: “I killed a woman”. He was covered in blood.

He takes a young nurse’s assistant to the scene, who alerts the emergency services. In the meantime, since his accommodation is nearby, he goes to wash his hands, change his T-shirt and settles down on his sofa to drink a beer.

He returned to the scene and waited for the police. He was arrested, his blood alcohol level was over 1.5 grams of alcohol.

The accused changes his version

During his police custody, the person concerned admitted to having struck his victim numerous blows. He specified that each time the victim lost consciousness, he made her come back to her by splashing her face with water. Then, he administered a new round of blows.

Questioned by the president of the court, the accused retracts part of his statements. “Everything happened quickly,” he says. He denies having brought her back to her senses several times with water.

Unbearable images

During the testimony of the investigator who questioned the accused, the court presented the photographs of the crime scene. These are extremely shocking.

A naked body, particularly bruised, covered in bruises, then appears on the courtroom screen, followed by close-ups of the face, swollen, deformed following the series of blows received.

The inconsistency of certain statements made by the accused

The accused is questioned about certain details appearing in these photographs. His statements contradict the photographs taken by the gendarmerie’s criminal identification technician.

Stunned, the president encourages the accused to look at the photographs.

For example, the toilet is downstairs, there is a shower upstairs, nothing works, the person concerned sticks to his position, the toilet was upstairs and there were no showers. These are just two examples among others.

The presence of an interpreter does not facilitate the clarity of the proceedings, with an accused who at times appears to “disengage” from his own statements.

He ended up saying: “I no longer understand anything about all the statements, I recognize that I am accused of murder and rape, I accept the judgment.”

The medical examiner’s testimony

Professor Renaud Bouvet, head of the forensic medicine department at Rennes University Hospital, then came to give his testimony to the court.

He lists the numerous injuries he found during the victim’s autopsy: bruises over a large part of the body, a broken nose, numerous broken ribs, one of which had perforated the pleura, and a fractured sternum.

The cause of death was multiple trauma that caused respiratory failure. The victim’s blood alcohol level was only 0.29 grams.

The photographs of the victim and the description of this practitioner indicate that the accused used the victim as a “punching bag”.

Real psychological problems or a defense system? This is the key question that was to be addressed from Monday, during the depositions before the court of the three psychiatric experts who examined the accused, but who clearly did not arrive at the same conclusion on the mental state of the person concerned at the time of the events.

SK

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