We haven’t seen or heard him, but he is mentioned at least once every day. Now aged 12, the son of the accused is one of the central figures in the Troadec-Caouissin trial, which begins its third and last week on Monday at the Loire-Atlantique assizes. He has changed his identity since the tragedy, which occurred in February 2017, but the media have taken to naming him “Jean”. At the helm, those responsible for child welfare in Finistère refer to him as “the child”.
“The child was in the veranda (of his grandmother) drawing,” says Tiffany Blondel, team leader at the Departmental Council of Finistère, who went to pick him up on March 8, 2017, shortly after his parents’ incarceration. In the drawing, Tiffany Blondel remembers “something quite morbid”, “pipes with flowing blood”. “He came with us without difficulty,” she continues, describing the logorrhea of ”the child” in the carriage, who spoke of knights and the Middle Ages “in a very elaborate speech”. “He is a child who expresses few emotions. He didn’t cry, he was in his world, ”she adds.
Left alone for several nights
In the box, his father Hubert Caouissin, 50, listens without apparent reaction. He is judged for having killed with doe kicks Brigitte and Pascal Troadec, the maternal uncle and aunt of “Jean”, as well as his cousins Sébastien (21 years old) and Charlotte (18 years old). His mother Lydie Troadec, 52, appears free for crime scene modification and concealment of a corpse.
After the murders, on the night of February 16 to 17, 2017 in Orvault, near Nantes, his parents leave Jean, 8, several nights alone in their isolated farm in Pont-de-Buis (Finistère), while they go clean up the crime scene and recover the bodies. In the following days, the boy is tasked with monitoring BFMTV for information on the police investigation. To an educator, he said he saw “an iron bar with a pointed end and a bloodstain”. “Dad threw it in the water,” he says.
Marked by his father’s question
“His arrival was surprising: he gave himself up to many adults without knowing them,” said Joëlle Siffier, head of the child protection service. Jean evokes without filter or emotion the unfolding of the facts which his father told him. “We had to accompany him so that he no longer presents himself as the child of the Troadec affair,” she adds. “Very polite, very respectful, in his bubble”, the child “leaves little room for his affects”, according to Joëlle Siffier. According to his educators, he was nevertheless marked by the question of his father, who had asked him, before his arrest, if he preferred a “dead dad” or a “dad in prison for life”.
This father whom he will see again in prison in the summer of 2019, two years after the crimes. “The reunion was sober, without particular effusion (…) He sat on his knees, they were face to face without saying anything for a while,” said Magali Vendé, an executive in charge of the minors in charge.
According to her, Jean “could have come under educational assistance earlier”. Before 2017, the child lived in isolation with his parents, out of school for several months, suffering from a “too strong” educational requirement from his father, who for example forced him to drink 8 glasses of water a day.
“It is evolving positively”
His mother Lydie Troadec recognized at the bar a form of psychological abuse “involuntary”. Today, Jean has “a lot of pleasure” to see his mother again during “warm” visits, according to Magali Vendé.
“At home, he has lots of friends, he feels good there,” said Pascale Chanoine, hospital psychiatrist. “He knows that he is an individual in his own right, that he has the right to evolve, to grow. Today, it works for him, I hope that it will be able to continue, abounds Magali Vendé. Very good student, playing basketball, keen on French, Latin and history, he plans to become a doctor, researcher or writer. “He is evolving positively,” said his ad hoc administrator at the helm. “He loves his parents” and appreciates “the long distance relationship,” she added.