The French teacher accused of having harassed Evaëlle, who committed suicide in 2019 at the age of 11 in Val-d’Oise, will be judged by the Pontoise criminal court. She is accused of having regularly humiliated her student.
A teacher was sent to prison for “harassment of a minor” by an investigating judge from Pontoise as part of the investigation into the suicide of young Evaëlle, learned The Parisian this Thursday March 21, 2024.
In a separate procedure, two former comrades of Evaëlle are referred to the children’s court for harassment. Furthermore, since 2021, the teacher can no longer teach minors and has an obligation to provide psychological care.
Regular humiliations
He is accused of having “regularly humiliated” Evaëlle in front of her class, to have it “isolated at the bottom” and having organized “hours of classroom life relating to school bullying during which she stigmatized her as being a victim of harassment by her classmates and forced her to answer their questions”writes the judge in her order.
All of these behaviors had “the effect was a very significant deterioration in the living conditions of the young girl, who isolated herself more and more”, notes the judge, cited by France Blue.
The Pontoise public prosecutor’s office requested on February 12, 2024 the referral to trial for “moral harassment” a teacher and two classmates of Evaëlle. A third comrade, indicted, benefited from a dismissal of the charges.
Tried for harassment
“The initial involvement of my client in the tragic death of Evaëlle has been completely ruled out”underlines the teacher’s lawyer, Me Marie Roumiantseva, regarding the qualification of moral harassment retained by the Pontoise public prosecutor’s office in its indictment.
This was confirmed by the investigating judge who has just signed the order for referral to the criminal court. “As for the alleged moral harassment attributed to my client, the latter firmly refutes it and will explain it to the court if necessary”adds the professor’s advice.
Five years of waiting
The girl’s mother said she was relieved by this referral of the teacher to justice. “The final step for us is for her to be found guilty of harassing our daughter, of affecting her mental health, of initiating the harassment of other students”confides Marie Dupuis to Parisianbefore adding: “This is what we have been waiting for five years, it’s a very long time, it’s hell. We believed in it but without really believing in it”.
As a reminder, Evaëlle ended her life on June 25, 2019 in the family house in Herblay, in the greater Paris suburbs. The only way out she found, despite the support of her parents, to escape the harassment which began when she returned to sixth grade in 2018.