After eight years of investigation, two former educators of a medical-educational institute (IME) were indicted for “sexual assault on a minor under the age of 15”, said the Grenoble general prosecutor’s office, confirming information revealed. by THE Parisian. In total, seven children are concerned, the youngest was eleven years old at the time of the facts.
On July 4, the investigating chamber of the Grenoble Court of Appeal ordered these prosecutions, as part of additional information requested by the families of the victims. They had appealed the dismissal pronounced in April 2020, claiming an “additional hearing, psychological and psychiatric expertise” of the main suspect.
A first additional information had already been ordered in February 2021 by the investigating chamber of the Grenoble Court of Appeal. The main suspect had been indicted and two other former educators had been placed under the status of assisted witness for “sexual assault on a minor under the age of 15” and “rape on a vulnerable person”, specified the deputy prosecutor of Grenoble, Francois Touret de Coucy. These three men implicated were fired and suspended from their duties.
The main suspect already implicated in cases of rape of minors
This case began in 2015, for suspicions of sexual assault on a dozen children and adolescents by three specialized educators from the IME of Voiron, between 2012 and 2015. One of them had been placed in detention provisionally in April for possession of child pornography images.
This event had confirmed the doubts of several families whose children, for some autistic, had changed their behavior suddenly and described with their words and explicit gestures, sexual assaults. They then filed a complaint with civil action, resulting in the appointment of an investigating magistrate at the end of September 2016 in Grenoble.
The main suspect had already been implicated in two cases of rape of minors, his nephews, closed without further action. The individual was then employed in the Isère institute “without any qualification and without any information on his criminal record”, underlined Me Bertrand Sayn, lawyer for the parents of victims.