How was the “Sambre rapist” able to attack dozens of women for more than thirty years without being arrested? Series Sambre, named after the Franco-Belgian river which was the scene of around fifty rapes between the 1980s and 2018, looks back on this extraordinary criminal case. Co-written by Alice Géraud, author of the eponymous investigative book, Marc Herpoux and Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, also the director, this fiction attempts to understand how the greatest sexual predator in the history of France managed to crack down on so many time under the eyes of the local police.
On the occasion of its broadcast this Monday on France 2, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade returns to this news item which says a lot about the way our societies consider sexual victims.
You have dedicated your work to crimes, what attracts you so much about these stories?
Certain news items are extraordinary reveals of who we are as a society. It’s not all the crimes or all the news items. Laëtitia [Perrais, assassinée en 2011] And Sambre go far beyond the scope of news items. These are social facts. The story of the Sambre allowed us to tell the story of thirty years of non-support for victims of sexual violence. Thirty years of accessorized treatment of sexual delinquency. It is above all for what it reveals about us that it fascinates me.
What makes it a social fact?
The very unique story of Laëtitia allowed me to reveal the way in which a society takes care of the most deprived or weakest. Whether children and women, under certain conditions. How do we ultimately protect people who are mistreated? Sambre asks the question: what do we do about sexual crime? Is this a priority? When we look at the predator’s journey, we can’t help but think that there is a place in society that says: it’s not that serious, we let it happen. This is what this story tells us.
When we look at the predator’s journey, we can’t help but think that there is a place in society that says: it’s not that serious, we let it happen.
It is true that the police officers in “Sambre” are not enlightened, the psychological experts are also completely wrong…
This is not simply a story of police or justice dysfunction. That’s why we chose this structure where we change point of view in all the episodes. Each time, we find ourselves in another place in society. At that time, in terms of psychiatric studies, we imagine that the sexual predator is a person on the margins, asocial. However, we are in 2007. If we look at the facts, if we look this delinquency in the eyes, we know that these are people that everyone knows. These are perfectly integrated people, who have a profession, who are before our eyes. If it had been someone on the fringes of society, I would not have been interested in the story, I would not have found it sufficiently symptomatic of this phenomenon. That’s what was exciting. He is someone integrated, with a very strong social network, who does not hide. His family is a collateral victim. Everyone is completely fooled.
How can we explain that we have heard very little about this story?
When the trial opens in June 2022, we find a few lines in a few newspapers and that’s it. While the biggest sexual predator is in the dock. We still have 56 women whose lives are shattered, it’s colossal. Personally, I heard about this story because Alice Géraud, a former journalist from Releaseinvestigated the subject for his book, Sambre [J.C. Lattès], released last January. During her journalistic investigation, she accumulated so many details that she wanted to go through fiction. With fiction, we can take a little distance. It allows access to a certain form of intimacy. His book tells exactly what happened. For example, the character of Christine [interprétée par Alix Poisson], it is not a particular victim, it is the portrait of four or five victims at the same time. We didn’t want any of them to feel too stigmatized or too highlighted.
What did you keep from reality?
There are hundreds of details taken from reality, starting with the captain’s slippers. When Bernard leaves after welcoming Jean-Pierre, the new recruit, the camera lingers and we see that he is wearing charentaises. It’s a detail, but these are things that we don’t invent. The captain, at 7 a.m., received the new recruits in Charente, this was the state of the police in the 1980s. The scene where Enzo [le nom de Dino Scala dans la série] joke in front of his own sketch with the police, we couldn’t make it up. Everything in episode 3, he is received at the police station and the police have to take his DNA. He takes advantage of a moment alone to slip away. The DNA will never be taken. If the police had caught him at that time, how many victims would have escaped?
Even when we are in fiction and we are interested in reality, it is still a real commitment”
What is the fictionalized part of “Sambre”?
Christine is both all victims and no victims. One of the victims lived on the same street as Dino Scala, so it was thought that their children had probably attended the same school. The friendship between Christine’s daughter and the daughter of Enzo, the predator, is undoubtedly the most fictionalized thing in the series. When Christine arrives at the predator’s house and attends a family birthday, she enters into a normal, happy life. She is confronted with everything she has missed in her life. It was tempting and powerful. And we are not far from the truth. In one scene, fiction allows you to tell a lot of things without betraying reality. One of the victims was on the same street, she inevitably crossed paths with him while shopping, at the grocery store, in everyday life. We just pushed the idea a little.
What makes a criminal case telegenic?
Sometimes you have criminals who come out of the box really hard. Francis Heaulme, Michel Fourniret… There is a fascination with the figure of evil. I don’t find it to be the most interesting place because we talk about particular cases. When the news story tells something other than the news story, it takes on a telegenic dimension, it must be told. It’s not innocent to take hold of a news item, to fictionalize it, it’s still people’s lives. It’s quite a responsibility. You have to be sure to give extra meaning to the story.
What case has had the greatest impact on you in your career?
Without doubt, the history of The Staircase (Suspicions). I started filming in 2002 and we finished in 2017. I bonded with the entire Peterson family for over fifteen years. There have been three documentary series. This story never left me for fifteen years. Obviously, it has an impact. While working on Laëtitia, by meeting Laëtitia Perrais’s family, by remaining close to part of her family, we don’t turn the page like that. Even when we are in fiction and we are interested in reality, it is still a real commitment.