“You saw his penis ?” At the Assizes of Gard, the delicate hearings of the young pupils of the teacher accused of child rape

François Bossy appears free after spending two years in pre-trial detention. SKETCH ALINE CHAMPSAUR/FREE MIDI

François Bossy, 65, appears free before the Gard Assize Court, where he must answer to accusations brought by six students who described rapes they allegedly suffered when they were in his class, at the Caveirac nursery school, near Nîmes, in 2016.

Sitting on a green chair, at the foot of a poster of the film Jack and the Mechanics of the Heart, Lola, five and a half years old, a bubbly little brunette girl, is leaning on the table where she is playing with two figurines. In front of her, a police officer, in blue shorts and a white t-shirt. We are at the Caissargues juvenile delinquency prevention brigade, and this hearing filmed in July 2017 is screened at the Gard criminal court, where François Bossy, 65, appears, accused of having raped six children from his kindergarten class in Caveirac, in the fall of 2016, which he denies.

Sexed dolls to mime the scenes

The gendarme."You saw his penis ?" "Yes". "How was he ?" "Big". "Did you touch it ?" "Yes, with the hand". "Have you tasted it ?" "Yes, with the tongue."

During this hearing lasting almost an hour, where the gendarme made the child handle sexualized dolls, to mime scenes or show the parts of the body that the teacher would have touched, Lola also says that the latter put his penis "in the buttocks, that made me feel better. hurt" and  "in the pussy. I felt it. 

Facilitating the collection of children's words

On the stand, the gendarme explains. "These Mélanie auditions, named after the first little girl heard on video, were done to avoid repetition of auditions and to also show everything that is non-verbal. It's ae house designed to accommodate children, with toys, books in the entrance, desks in the bedrooms and an interview room, with a camera connected to a monitor , which the investigators observe, incognito, from another piece. The whole thing is supposed to facilitate the collection of the words of children who have suffered physical or sexual violence. 

Also read: "In front of the class, she started screaming" : in Nîmes, the conviction of the academy inspector in the face of pedophile suspicion

A hearing that sows trouble

"There are children who respond directly by looking into their eyes and we know that they are telling the truth and others who say one thing and whose body says another" pursues the gendarme who conducted "between 150 and 200 hearings of minor victims."

Here we are at the heart of the trial, in this case where no forensic trace was found on the children, where we have no direct witness, apart from toddlers then aged 4 and 5 years old, with fragile speech, and where the accused, who appears free after two years of pre-trial detention, formally contests the facts.

But the broadcast of another hearing sows trouble. Marie, 4 years old, in a white dress, her chin barely touches the table. The gendarme questions her about what she could have suffered, the little girl dodges, retreats into silence, sighs, looks to the side. She is visibly in pain. The child is reluctant, the police officer insistent. After an hour, a break. Resumption with the mother next to the child. The gendarme: "Your mother will be sad if you don't tell me your secret."

"We're almost on harassment"

The president of the conference, Corinne Rieu. "On this intervention, the Mélanie protocol seems to me to have been broken. There is the intervention of the mother, which is not planned, and a kind of emotional blackmail. The general impression that comes from this hearing is very uncomfortable, this little girl, we push her, we push her. We are almost on harassment, are you aware of it ?"

The gendarme. "We feel that she is uncomfortable and has something to say, I try to get to the end and free her words.& quot; Lola's mother is called to the stand. "Clearly, she was hiding something, it was for me obvious."

Clumsiness and professional misconduct

Me Marc Roux, in defense of François Bossy, recalls that the investigator told the little girl that other children had already told everything , which was false. "Is it okay to lie to try to get a truth that you believe is right ?"  He recalls the severe judgment made by the Nîmes prosecutor's office in its indictment: "In good faith, the investigators totors have sometimes committed clumsiness or even professional misconduct."

"It’s difficult to hear a child. In more than 90% of cases of pedophilia, it concerns a loved one, with a bond of trust established between the perpetrator and the child. For me I have no doubt" insists the gendarme.

François Bossy, for his part, pursues with mixed success what seems to be his first objective: to manage to be forgotten, in this trial where he spoke very little. While everyone is captured by these moving videos, he blandly consults his phone, in the dock, until the police intervene. He faces twenty years in prison.

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