Trial of an actor in Vevey
The after-#Metoo spotlights the “Bernard method”
What to do with the suffering of the complainants, with a right that has taken a turn? The question crossed the pleadings on Tuesday.
Alongside Bernard* (* known name of the editorial staff) Me Mirko Giorgini pleaded the Clemence. According to him, most of the alleged acts do not fall under criminal.
Gilles-Emmanuel Fiaux
- The prosecutor requires 30 months in prison for abuses out of eleven young people.
- The complainants’ lawyers denounce a systematic exploitation of vulnerable young people.
- The accused particularly targeted fragile students in the improvisation world.
- The accused apologized to the victims after the trial.
Yes the Veveysan actor trial Accused of abuse on eleven former students is followed with so much attention, it is that, through the stories of the complainants, a collective history is written: that of the tipping of opinion operated in 2017 by the surge #metoo. Relations followed, kisses, touching or sexual intercourse in the wake of alcoholic evenings, the actions on the 34 -year -old defendant are around this pivotal year.
Did the complainants opportunely surf on the wave and revisit their history in light of new spotlights? Or their deep discomfort and their confused feelings were able to equip themselves with words, thanks to the release of speech?
These questions lived in the time of the pleadings on Tuesday. A sign of the evolution of mentalities, each validated the suffering expressed by the complainants. But how to criminally qualify what has been suffered?
Credible victims
Measured, the representative of the public prosecutor, Laurie Roccaro, begins by welcoming the “disarming sincerity of the victims. They described things in a raw way, without giving themselves the beautiful role, without a desire to overwhelm, which accredits their credibility. ”
Faced with an audience sensitive to recent developments in law, it recalls its duty to apply the legal framework in force at the time of the facts, that is to say before the Reform of the sex criminal standard.
It retains sexual acts with children or on a person who is unable to resistance, does not qualify rape a sexual intercourse imposed on a young girl and identifies the constraint only in a few cases: “for there to be constrained through” structural violence “, that is to say an instrumentalization of social means, it takes a particular intensity and an intention of the author. These conditions were not always met. ” The magistrate requires 30 months in prison, including 6 closes, and a life ban to work with children.
Alongside the complainants, which are nine at the trial, three lawyers castigate the “narrow” vision of the prosecution. In their eyes, the applicable law makes it possible to retain sexual constraint in almost all cases: “When there is an emotional or social dependence, in particular in the presence of children or adolescent girls, the offense can be carried out. It is not me who says it, it is the Federal Court, asserts Me Coralie Devaud. Our customers were at an age and in a situation of confidence vis-à-vis the author who made them vulnerable. ”
The “Bernard method”
Me Loïc Parein detects constants in these stories and depicts an operating mode, the “Bernard method”. Meeting several young people from school, where he officiated as a replacement, the actor won their complicity, eroticized relations, waiting for them to reach the age of “doing things”. “To this immature audience, he imposed his narrative. What matters is what these children believed. He had power, because he had told them. ”
In the author’s “systematics”, Me Coralie Germond describes the profile of targeted young people and explains what they can not be explained: why did they give in, sometimes continued? “They were children tortured internally, for whom the world of improvisation was a refuge, they thought they would leave it if they lost the friendship of the accused. For a long time, everyone thought it was alone against Bernard who imposed omerta. If they finally dared to speak one after the other, it was because the police who contacted them over the hearings. And all of them did not choose to express themselves… ”
In La Défense, in a succinct argument, Me Mirko Giorgini applies to deconstructing the facts, tries to empty the accusation of his substance to request a sentence compatible with the stay. “Afterwards, the complainants were able to say to themselves” Why did I did that? ” I was too young… ”We can respect it. But not condemn for that. What is left? The unpleasant feeling that an adult should not do that, whatever the criminal norm. ”
Applying to look at the complainants, Bernard – still presumed innocent – sent their last words to them: “I am sorry if you have not felt in my house guilt, because there are. I never realized that I could hurt. I apologize to the people I have suffered. ” Verdict Thursday.
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