Justice has not finished with the Lucas affair, named after this teenager who committed suicide last January in the Vosges after being harassed. The Nancy public prosecutor’s office and the victim’s mother announced on Monday that they would appeal to the Court of Cassation after the acquittal of the four schoolchildren accused of having harassed the teenager. “The general public prosecutor’s office has filed an appeal,” simply announced a spokesperson for the general public prosecutor’s office at the Nancy Court of Appeal.
The release of the four minors led to the rejection of the request for damages made by Lucas’ family. His lawyer, Me Catherine Faivre, indicated that she had filed an appeal on the civil provisions.
On November 6, the Nancy Court of Appeal acquitted the four teenagers prosecuted for acts of “harassment leading to the suicide” of Lucas. At first instance, the court found the four minors guilty of harassment, but without retaining the causal link between these facts and Lucas’ suicide.
The court of appeal, in its decision, noted the “odious” nature of comments which had been made by the defendants, two boys and two girls, “between September 1, 2022 and the beginning of October 2022”, but it underlines “the “lack of demonstrated effect” of these comments “on Lucas’ mental health”, and points to the absence of “causal link” with the schoolboy’s suicide, which occurred several weeks later, on January 7, 2023.
“The judicial system today does not respond to lived reality…”
This decision was “a shock” for Lucas’ mother, according to Me Faivre. “The judicial system today does not respond to the reality experienced by victims of school bullying who must be protected,” she lamented.
Lucas, 13, committed suicide on January 7 after writing a note expressing his desire to end his life. Those close to him had denounced acts of harassment, revealing the mockery and homophobic insults of which the teenager had said he was the victim from students at his college.
This tragedy raised a wave of emotion and provoked several political reactions. “When a child ends his life, there are no words to express the grief, the pain,” Pap Ndiaye, then Minister of National Education, declared to the Senate, visibly moved.
In Épinal at the beginning of February, several hundred people took part in a white march in memory of the young boy.