A lifeguard compared from today to the Assize Court of Evreux in Normandy for sexual assault and rape of 22 minors between 1995 and 2011. The youngest was 9 years old at the time of the facts. It is the complaint of a young man in 2014 that had revealed the actions of this swimming coach of Pont-Saint-Pierre.
12 years after the events, a young man crossed the door of the Argenteuil police station. He denounces the rapes of his swimming coach. Rapes that took place in hotel rooms during trips on the margins of competitions, or even in the home of the lifeguard.
He explains that he wanted to "create a group emulation". By searching the trainer's home, the gendarmes quickly find photos of partially-exposed minors and even a photomontage of a boy doing a blowjob to a man. Placed in custody, the suspect denies the facts of assault and rape and speaks of caresses. Gradually other young men are testifying too. They describe the same scenarios, always without violence but on the occasion of games. The assaults took place especially in the home of the lifeguard who housed his students during the courses organized over several days at the pool. The lifeguard then made sure that the situation drifted towards sexual scenes. Faced with the investigators, he explains that he wanted to "create a group emulation".
Nicknamed "darling" at the pool, the lifeguard, who is about thirty years old at the beginning of the charges against him, is described as a local "institution" appreciated by all. A complainant explains that he "felt obligated to obey" and that after the sexual acts he turned around and cried in his bed "without the coach noticing it." Nor did the parents nothing like this mother who remembers seeing her son come back crying from the coach's home where he no longer wanted to go, without understanding the reasons for this sudden change. did not understand why her son had stopped swimming overnight in 2001. Parents have every confidence in this "key figure of the club" who look after their children.
"They made the analogy with Neverland, Mickael Jackson's house." Charged with sexual assault and raping six minors in December 2015, the coach admitted to assaulting two other boys. The instruction finally holds 22 victims. The youngest were only 9 at the time of the events. During his acting out, one of the complainants remembers that his coach asked him to think of a girl from the college that he liked. Some stopped swimming to escape their predator.
All describe a similar operation, the children saw the lifeguard as a friend with whom they went to the cinema played video games and also shared sexual games. "They made the analogy with Neverland, the house of Mickael Jackson, explains Master Grimaud who represents 13 civil parties, an enchanted house where all the games were possible, all the parental prohibitions were lifted. works in the mind of the child, a form of grip in which the child will not distinguish sexual pleasure and pleasures of everyday life and submit despite himself to the extreme sexual desire sometimes violent this lifeguard ". Most of the complainants denounce scenes that are repeated over several years. An expert who met one of the complainants in adulthood notes a strong "feeling of guilt for not reporting the facts and being put in this situation". Another admits that he never spoke shamefully about the "isolated mistake" of what he calls "the god of lifeguards"
During training, the lifeguard explained that he was not aware of any restraint. It was, he said stronger than him, there was "a force he did not control". The investigating judge found that the lifeguard "exercised a real grip using manipulation not only on children but also on their parents". Today, according to his lawyer, "after 4 years of work and psychological follow-up in prison, he recognizes the facts and he experiences sincere repentance".