Illustration of a courtroom at the Rennes Criminal Court. – Camille Allain / 20 Minutes
The slowness of French justice is often criticized. The case judged Thursday before the criminal court of Vannes (Morbihan) goes in this direction. A man was being tried there for sexual assault on two of his daughters. Facts which would have taken place from 1993 and would have ceased twenty-five years ago, in 1996. The complaints were filed in 2009,
report West France, which specifies that the victims were between 10 and 11 years old at the time of the facts.
The touching denounced by the girls allegedly took place during a visit by the father to the mother’s home, who had sole custody of her daughters. A year earlier, she had left her abusive husband to join a home for battered women in Rennes.
The president apologizes for the slowness
Educated in Rennes, then in Lorient and finally in Vannes, the case will have taken twelve years to lead to a hearing. An abnormally long delay which prompted the president to apologize on behalf of the institution, recognizing “dysfunctions”, reports West France.
The father, absent from the hearing, was found guilty of incest and sentenced to five years in prison. He will have to compensate his daughters and will be registered in the automated judicial file of perpetrators of sexual and violent offenses (Fijais).