End of the unbearable trial. After ten days of hearing and in a court full to bursting, the jurors of the Assize Court of the North, in Douai, delivered their verdict, this Friday, in the case of little Joris *, victim of acts of barbarism during alcoholic evenings, in Auberchicourt, in the North.
In this extraordinary file, four people, a couple and two brothers, were accused of torture vis-à-vis a child of two and a half years. Sébastien B. and Coraline R., the couple who had hosted the victim, were sentenced to 20 and 15 years’ imprisonment respectively.
In addition, the two brothers, Kevin and Jordan D., who had participated in the acts of torture, were sentenced to 12 and 10 years in prison.
“You came close to going back to prison”
Two women were also tried, one, Audrey R., for failure to assist a person in danger, the other Christine P., the mother of the victim, for violence against her two children. They are both sentenced to 4 years in prison. “You came close to going back to prison”, announces the president of the court, in a very tense atmosphere.
In December 2018, Christine P. entrusts her son Joris* to friends, the couple Sébastien B. and Coraline R. In the background, Christine P. and Sébastien B. have a romantic relationship and Joris*’s father is in prison. . For ten days, and in particular during two evenings, the child suffered a surge of violence which led him to the hospital.
Faced with the multiple fractures it presents, the alert is given. The mother is taken into custody. The tongues end up loosening, placing the police before a case of brutality that is difficult to describe. An investigation is opened.
“He no longer feels pain, neither hot nor cold”
She will bring to light other violence against six other children: the brother of Joris *, but also the five daughters of Sébastien B. The latter, from a first union, have also experienced an ordeal for years, forced in particular to eat sometimes on the ground, in bowls.
“These are balanced sentences, depending on the degree of contrition and participation of each”, considers Me Alain Reisenthel, lawyer for child victims. The latter returns to the situation of Joris*. “He needs to be re-operated and suffers from neuro-psychological trauma. He no longer feels pain, neither hot nor cold, he says. But he’s in a caring foster family. He is miraculous because, within a few hours, he would be dead. »
The breeding ground of this file is part of the social misery and intra-family violence already present in the childhood of the accused. Except for Coraline and Audrey R., two sisters who grew up in a very structured family cocoon. “The problem is that we did not speak in this silent family, as they say, specifies Louis Yarroudh-Ferrion, lawyer for Audrey R. Everything was internalized, a bit like in Jacques Brel’s song. When she witnesses the outbursts of violence, she does not speak, when she should have. Just as she had not spoken when she was the victim of domestic violence. »
*Name has been changed.