They said their “guilt” for having “seen nothing” for two decades. This Tuesday, at the trial of a grandfather, tried before the criminal court of the Pyrénées-Atlantiquespour sex and sexual assaults in eight children and adolescentsincluding three grandsons, victims and relatives have spoke.
The 69 -year -old accused, who appears until Thursday For sexual violence On a nephew, children around him or neighbors between 2004 and 2022, recognized all of the facts that justice accuses him of having committed.
A first complaint in 2021
In 2021, a first victim, a man now thirties and father, had filed a complaint for rapes and sexual assaults, suffered between his 13 and 15 years. Contacted by the investigators, several of the grandchildren of the respondent, as well as the children around him, had filed a complaint in the process for similar facts.
In front of the judges of the criminal court, the first complainant explained on Tuesday to have decided by seeing a facebook photo of his attacker, surrounded by his grandchildren. “I failed to save them, I’m sorry not to have spoken before, he managed to turn his brain back,” he breathes at the helm, collapsed.
“I am guilty because I have not seen anything, I have not protected my children,” added the ex-wife of the accused. “He was very tactile, he was all the time with the boys, the girls told me that Grandpa did not love them. »»
“I think he has always done this”
All the victims describe the same scene: the man made them go up on his lap, in front of his computer, and took the opportunity to engage in caresses and masturbations. “We had it in front of us and we did not see it,” regrets the sixties, stressing that the family “now has trouble finding themselves together”.
One of the couple’s girls remembers hearing his father repeat for years: “I will finish alone and in prison” – without explaining it.
The 42 -year -old son was a civil party in the trial. “So far, I had not realized that what my father had done to me was touching, simply because it was my father,” he said, evoking “decalottages” until he was 14. “I think he has always done this and there are other victims. I feel guilty like everyone else for not having seen or listened to. If I had been able to understand before it was not normal, I could have spoken to my mother and my sisters, “continued the forties.
“I do the same thing as what to do with me”
Long white beard, hair tied in a catalan and glasses on the nose, the accused remained mutic, without a look towards the benches of the civil parties.
Born in Moselle in a siblings of nine children, he nevertheless remembers having been sexually assaulted in his childhood by his stepfather and his older brother. “I redo the same thing as what he did to me,” he told the court. “It seems that in all his career, he reproduces the scheme he has known,” noted a personality investigator.
Pressed by the president of the criminal court, the civil parties but also his own lawyer, the grandfather did not give more reasons to these multiple acts to the act. “Why did I become that?” I can’t answer you, ”he said to say.
