New legal stage for Nordahl Lelandais. The former soldier, sentenced in February 2022 to life imprisonment for the kidnapping and murder of little Maëlys de Araujo, 8 years old, and for touching two little cousins aged 4 and 6, is on trial Monday before the Charleville-Mézières criminal court for the sexual assault of another second cousin, a minor at the time of the events. He is also accused of having threatened and intimidated the teenager, then aged 14, so that she would not file a complaint. Prosecuted as a repeat offender, the defendant faces twenty years in prison.
Charlotte * filed a complaint against Nordahl Lelandais in April 2019. But the attack of which she says she was the victim dates back to March 2017. It is a day that she will never be able to forget. That Thursday, the whole family was gathered around her and her mother, in the Ardennes, for the funeral of her father, who had died a few days earlier.
Among the guests, this great cousin suggests, at one point, that he go a little further from the house to go smoke a cigarette. The teenager, upset, accepts. “He hugs me, except he moves his hands down. I feel them going down my back, his hands are placed on my buttocks, insistently,” she said. in July 2019 on BFM TV. She tries to push him away as he touches her chest. With his “black gaze”, the man “scares” her.
“If you say anything, I’ll kill you”
To escape him, the young girl decides to return to her family. Along the way, Nordahl Lelandais allegedly threatened her. “If you say anything, I’ll kill you.” » At the time, the defendant did not yet have blood on his hands. The events took place just one month before the murder of Corporal Arthur Noyer, for which the former soldier was sentenced in May 2021 to twenty years in prison, and five months before the kidnapping and murder of little Maëlys.
For several months, she kept what happened to herself. But its big cousin doesn’t stop there. He sends her text messages, to which Charlotte responds. “I was afraid that he would come back, that he would come back and simply kill me if I didn’t answer. »
At the end of 2018, the teenager learned that Nordahl Lelandais was indicted for the sexual assault of two others little cousins, aged 4 and 6 years old. Touching that he filmed with his cell phone. Charlotte decides to tell her mother everything. “I thought it was time to talk about it. That I had to talk about it because I could no longer keep it to myself, it was too hard,” she again confided to BFM TV. In February 2020, Nordahl Lelandais was taken from Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison (Isère) and placed in police custody by the gendarmes of the Reims research section.
The defendant denies the accusations
The former dog handler was indicted on February 27, 2020. He will appear for “sexual assault imposed on a minor under 15 years of age” and “threat or act of intimidation to persuade a victim not to file a complaint or to retract,” indicated the public prosecutor of Charleville-Mézières, Magali Josse, in a press release.
Contacted by 20 minutes, Nordahl Lelandais’ lawyer, Me Alain Jakubowicz, did not wish to speak before the trial. He simply states that his client denies the accusations brought against him by his little Cousine.
*The first name has been changed