White roses for Rose. Bouquets of flowers were placed under the two portraits of the 5-year-old girl, who was found dead on Tuesday afternoon. On the steps of her house, in Rambervillers, in the Vosges, the mother of the victim is overcome by pain and despair. “There is nothing that can bring my daughter back to me, it’s too hard, I’m destroyed, it’s too painful,” the 34-year-old woman yells at the journalists present. “Whoever did this, I want him to pay well, because I pay with all my life,” she adds, in tears. The disturbing profile of the suspect, aged 15, questions him. The teenager has already been indicted since the beginning of 2022 in another case for “rape and sexual assault on a minor”. He was placed in a closed educational center for a year before being placed under judicial control. “Why did they let him out?” she asks herself.
The public prosecutor of Epinal, Frédéric Nahon, tried to answer this question during a press conference on Thursday. The suspect, who has a clean criminal record, is therefore already implicated for “acts of rape committed on two boys aged 10 and 11, in the woods, near Rambervillers”, he recalled. The investigation is still in progress. At the age of 14, he was placed in a closed educational center for one year. “It is the maximum that the law allows”, underlined the magistrate. The placement of minors in these structures is pronounced for a fixed period, generally six months renewable once.
His placement was lifted recently, in March 2023, and he returned to live with his mother in this town of 5,000 inhabitants. He was then “under strict judicial control” and was the subject of “reinforced support from the PJJ”, the judicial protection of youth. “Educators went to his home, but not daily. »
“His evolution was completely positive”
The teenager had to respect in particular “obligations of training and care”, which he did, according to the reports submitted by his educators. The latter noted that “its evolution was completely positive”. A psychiatric expertise, carried out in the context of this previous case, “underlined the existence of a slight mental deficiency”, observes Frédéric Nahon, adding that he has never stayed in a psychiatric hospital. The expert who examined him during this new police custody following the death of Rose, concluded him “to the existence of an alteration of discernment and to his dangerousness for others, without further precision”. In front of the investigators, he “did not make delusional remarks or suggest psychiatric disorders” but “he made use of his right to silence”, indicates the prosecutor of Epinal. “We don’t have his version of the facts. »
For the time being, we therefore know that the girl’s mother reported her disappearance to the gendarmes on Tuesday around 3:10 p.m. Rose was playing in a square near her home when she vanished. An important device was then set up to search for her. The suspect then presented himself to the municipal police. He informed them of the presence of the victim’s body at his home. The gendarmes, who arrived on the spot, accompanied him and, in the apartment located in a housing estate in the city, found the body in a plastic bag. An autopsy will be carried out on Friday at the Nancy forensic institute. “We will know more about the circumstances of the death and the existence or not of acts of rape”, specified the magistrate, adding that he had requested the indictment of the suspect and his placement in detention. Aged less than 16, he faces twenty years of criminal imprisonment, and not life, because of his age.
“What care and what follow-up? »
The association The voice of the child indicates for its part that it is a civil party in this case. “It seems important to us to understand what could not be put in place to prevent what happened. Understand the acting out of this young person who is not 16, who was known to the services and who had gone to a closed educational center”, explains to 20 minutes its president, Martine Brousse. She wonders: “Was there an assessment made during and after her visit to this centre? Wasn’t there another possibility than sending him home? What care and follow-up were put in place when he left? »
Martine Brousse also denounces “the shortage of social workers, child psychiatrists” experienced by “many departments, especially in the Vosges”. And the president of the association wonders: “Have the right answers been given to this young person who was in great difficulty? »