A former deputy of the presidential party LREM de la Loire, found guilty of sexual assault on two girls aged six and eight and possession of child pornography images, was sentenced Monday to three years in prison, including two years suspended , by the Criminal Court of Saint-Etienne.
The representative of the prosecution, Marielle Romier, had requested five years of imprisonment, including two suspended probation against Matheus Branquinho, 43, who is imposed five years of ineligibility, an obligation of care and a permanent ban. of any activity involving contact with minors.
The former Franco-Brazilian deputy to the LREM (La République en Marche) deputy for the 3rd constituency of the Loire, Valéria Faure-Muntian (elected from 2017 to 2022), was found guilty of assaulting a six-year-old girl. years belonging to his family circle, as well as another eight-year-old child, during the year 2020, at the home of their parents.
“Convoluted statements”
He is also ordered to pay several thousand euros in damages to one of the families concerned, which has filed a civil action, as well as to the association for the protection of children “Innocence in danger”. “Psychiatric and psychological experts believe that his recurrence is possible because he evacuates the prohibition linked to pedocrime”, underlined the deputy prosecutor about the one who methodically denied the alleged facts.
“For ten years that I have been registered with the bar, this case is perhaps the most difficult that I have had to plead”, confessed his counsel, Me Mehdi Mahnane, at the start of his speech, evoking a “personality weakness of this boy with variable declarations”, otherwise described as intelligent.
“I would like to be able to say that these children are lying or wrong, but nothing in the file allows me to do so”, admitted the lawyer, describing as “convoluted” the statements of his client who had initially denied the facts , before recognizing them before the examining magistrate and then definitively retracting. “Under pressure, I ended up telling the gendarmes and the judge what they wanted to hear”, justified the defendant, who at the hearing was not able to explain the presence in his computer of more than 4,000 photos or videos of a child pornography nature.