It is a case “unusual in its scale” but revealing the “considerable and recurring deficiencies of the child welfare system” (ASE), summarizes lawyer Jean Sannier. He defends the Innocence in Danger association and at least five victims in the trial of nineteen people accused of mistreatment of around twenty foster children, which opens Monday in Châteauroux (Indre).
Among these defendants, Julien M. and Bruno C. have most of the accusations of violence against them. Between 2013 and 2017, dozens of children followed by social services, perhaps up to a hundred, were sent to the “Enfance et Bien-être” association created by Julien M., although the latter did not not have the approval required to take care of minors without family. Three years earlier, Julien M.’s parents, Colette M. and Antoine M., lost their right to welcome these young people after the father’s conviction for sexual assault on children in care “but they will continue to take in charge via their son’s association,” assures Jean Sannier.
Other host families, in Indre, Creuse and Haute-Vienne, assist Julien M., also illegally there, revealed Radio France last September. People “in trouble” who serve as subcontractors to Julien M.’s company, according to one of the defendants who confided in Parisian.
Unbearable violence
Julien M., is quickly joined by a certain Bruno C. The children are sent by the ASE of the Nord department to the structure supposed to be non-profit. The two men “will take advantage of this windfall to unleash their violence on these children, kicking, punching, whipping, putting their heads in the toilet and flushing,” says the lawyer. Villainous doctors or false prescriptions allowed them to heavily medicate young people with “horse drugs”, adds the lawyer.
“Julien spoke to us very badly, he said to us: ‘I’m going to break your knees…’ I was so scared that, at night, I didn’t dare go down to the ground floor to go to the toilet, I did on me,” says Karl, now 19 years old, Parisian. Another young person, Antoine, remembers being “drowned in the swimming pool” to the point of feeling like he was “going away”, on the verge of “losing consciousness”. Mathias, 22, talks about whippings but also particularly humiliating scenes. Julien M. “put his fingers under my throat, he tried to lift me. He pulled down my pants which I immediately pulled back up. Then he lowered his before pissing on me,” he tells Radio France. Facts that the two friends did not dispute before the investigators.
It was through Mathias that the affair finally broke out, putting an end to the ordeal of these dozens of suffering young people, “abandoned by their parents, then abandoned by the courts”, denounces Me Sannier. In 2017, when he was not yet 15 years old, Mathias was transported to the Limoges University Hospital by Julien M. who claimed he had fallen while cycling. The teenager remained in a coma for six days before waking up and remembers being hit as if “his head was a football”, his council reports. He begs not to be handed over again to the man who dropped him off. Alerted, the medical staff expressed their reservations to the authorities who will open an investigation. It is the beginning of the end for these traumatized young people, most of them now adults and scattered across France. But we will have to wait seven years for a trial which some cannot even afford to attend. If nineteen victims have been identified, only half will come to trial. This is why the lawyer opened a Leetchi pot, allowing these young people to go to Châteauroux for four days and testify at the bar.
Major absentees at the trial
During these seven years of abuse, Julien M. and Bruno C. pocketed at least 630,000 euros according to the procedure, a sum “closer to a million”, according to Jean Sannier’s calculations. Money directly paid by the ASE of the North, despite being alerted on at least four occasions of abuse suffered. “The ASE was perfectly aware of the reception conditions of these children, and deliberately did not lift a finger,” said one of the defense lawyers interviewed by Radio France. However, the ASE du Nord is not summoned to appear, nor to testify, Jean Sannier is surprised, according to whom “by ignoring, by not wanting to hear, it allowed this violence, what the two defendants called “reframings””. Another misunderstanding: the non-prosecution of certain acts such as “forced labor of minors” or “sexual violence”. Two questions which should occupy the debates in the courtroom of the Châteauroux criminal court.
Placing children without being too demanding on the destination, “this is unfortunately not exceptional”, according to Françoise de Gouville, director of prevention and social development of the department of Indre. “Many important departments which lack places tend to send the children for whom they are responsible to other departments without being sufficiently careful and respectful of the regulations,” she explains to Radio France.
The dramatic affair for these children ultimately reveals the “well-known endemic” flaws in the child welfare system, believes Jean Sannier. These placements in unapproved structures or families “are extremely common”, also concedes Kim Reuflet of the Magistrates’ Union to Radio France, while the number of children to be placed increases when the number of places continues to decrease.
