The retired couple is accused of having inflicted serious abuse on three children placed with them by the Children’s Social Assistance between 1988 and 1991. Aged 65 and 71, the respondents dispute the facts.
Facts dating back more than three decades are being judged from this Monday at the Assize Court of Amiens. They were brought to the attention of justice seven years ago by one of the victims, while she was in police custody for a sexual assault committed on her sister. Facing the investigators, the suspect acknowledged the charges, but also explained that he had reproduced what he had suffered with his foster family in the late 1980s, when he was between 6 and 9 years old.
These accusations gave rise to the opening of a judicial investigation in 2018 against a retired couple, now aged 65 and 71, who between 1988 and 1991 took in children placed by social assistance in the ‘childhood. Among the little past in this family, three claimed during the investigation to have been victims of serious abuse, but only one of them was a civil party.
Food deprivation and forced sex
In particular, they denounced regular physical violence with beatings, sexual assault, food deprivation and kidnapping. The only civil party in this case says that he was locked up several times in his room or outside, naked and with the dogs, reports France Blue.
Another victim explains that he was forced by the couple to perform oral sex on a child as well as on dogs, and to sodomize them. The woman denounced by the victims was employed as a family assistant before being dismissed by the Somme department after reports of abuse. She also worked as a childminder, before retiring in 2018, underlines France Bleu.
The couple sent back to the assizes deny the facts with which they are accused and accuse the children – whom they describe as very disturbed – of having invented everything. The verdict is due on Wednesday.
