Friday, Franck Lavier, 45, one of those acquitted from Outreau, will be tried before the criminal court of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in Pas-de-Calais, for sexual assault on his eldest daughter in 2015 and 2016, then that she was a minor. Facts that he disputes but for which he faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of 100,000 euros.
The Boulogne-sur-Mer public prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation in 2016 following a report from this child, then aged 16, revealing “within her school establishment to have been the victim of acts of a sexual nature by the from his father”, according to the Douai Court of Appeal.
“Sexual assault by ascendant”
The prosecutor ordered the provisional placement of the teenager, then, on June 10, 2016, Franck Lavier, who disputes the facts, was placed under judicial supervision. First referred in November 2021 to the Pas-de-Calais assizes for rape and sexual assault, the accused appealed the indictment order, as did his daughter, who requested the criminalization of the facts . The investigating chamber of the Douai Court of Appeal finally decided, in June 2022, to criminalize the fact of “rape by ascendant” into “sexual assault by ascendant”.
Franck Lavier, interim, “never recognized these facts”, his lawyer Me Fabienne Roy-Nansion told AFP, announcing that she will plead for acquittal. The young woman, aged 23 and a mother, according to her “never managed to integrate into her family” after being “placed at 20 months”, when the Outreau affair broke out, and “ found his parents at six years old. With this complaint, according to the lawyer, she wanted to “flee the family home”.
Convicted in 2012 for violence against this same girl
In 2011, then aged 11, Franck Lavier’s daughter had already denounced acts of abuse with her little brother. The parents were sentenced in 2012 to ten and eight months in prison for habitual violence, but acquitted of the charge of corruption of minors by the Criminal Court of Boulogne-sur-Mer. The court considered that, if these latter facts were morally reprehensible, the criminal offense was not constituted, because the desire to corrupt minors was not proven.
According to the prosecution, supported by the findings of a forensic doctor, these children had been forced to kneel on a broom for hours as punishment. The little girl’s fingertips also bore marks of blows with box spring slats.
A video dating from March 2009, taken during a drunken party and featuring more or less naked adults simulating sexual acts in the presence of children, was then seized from the Laviers’ home. Subsequent searches led to the discovery of other photos and videos from half a dozen similar evenings between 2008 and 2009.
Franck Lavier was one of those accused in Outreau with his partner. He was sentenced in 2004 by the Pas-de-Calais Assize Court to six years in prison for the rape of his stepdaughter, then acquitted the following year by the Paris Court of Appeal. He had spent a total of 36 months in prison.