The French-Lebanese trumpet player, Ibrahim Maalouf, was tried this Friday before the court of Créteil for sexual assault on a 14-year-old schoolgirl. The prosecution ordered six months of suspended prison sentence against the musician.
The prosecutor's office on Friday ordered a six-month suspended prison sentence against the French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, tried in court in Créteil (Val-de-Marne) for sexual assault on a 14-year-old schoolgirl. The judgment will be rendered on 23 November.
According to the version of the young woman, now aged 18, the musician would have kissed her a first time one evening at the exit of a cinema. A "kiss with the tongue" according to her, a "kiss" , according to Ibrahim Maalouf, 33 years old at the time, in 2013. For him, it is the girl who was at the origin. "I took her wrists, I walked away from her, without rushing her . "
Two days later and according to the version of the girl, the musician would have kissed her again, in his recording studio this time, where she was doing an internship. He would have "caught by the pelvis" , mimicking a sexual act. "I felt his cock behind me on my buttocks," she told investigators.
This second sequence never existed, for its part held at the bar the trumpet player, laureate of four Victories of Music and a Cesar of the Best Film Music. "In any case I had no physical or sexual attraction" for this "teenager" , he assured, feeling however "guilty" of "not being able to put limits" .
Hospitalizations and therapies
The parents did not report the facts until a year later, after she confided in a doctor. She had started scarifying herself and having eating disorders, and has since made several hospitalizations and therapies. "How do you want a girl whose health condition is objectively degraded, lying, for nothing, just because she would have been upset to have been spurned? The prosecutor pissed off in his requisitions.
And addressing Ibrahim Maalouf: "It takes more than the right to impute that to a girl of 14 years . " No doubt for him, the girl, who wanted to be a trumpet player and had acknowledged being "fascinated" , "in love" with the musician, is "credible" . There was "surprise" and "constraint," he said.
In her closing speech, Ibrahim Maalouf's lawyer, Maud Sobel, spoke of a girl's "spiteful love" that "would have liked this transgression to continue" . She pleaded the acquittal, finding that there was no evidence to support her guilt.
"I thought it was something awesome happening to me," said the girl at the bar. "I was grateful to him, I had the impression that he gave me a disproportionate importance, at my age, with his notoriety. It took me a long time to realize that it was not normal . "I know I'm telling the truth," the student wrote in a shy but firm voice.
In his requisitions, the prosecutor emphasized the "non-dangerousness" of Ibrahim Maalouf, and noted that he did not want to require that the latter, who teaches music to young people, can no longer work with minors. "There are times when it can happen to each of us to commit offenses," he said.