A 61-year-old pensioner was sentenced to three months in prison with the lifting of a three-month suspended sentence for sexual exhibition.
Living in Chanteloup, near Rennes, he practices naturism at the edge of a pond located in Corps-Nuds.
The defendant believes that he is not in violation and will appeal to the Court of Cassation to try to have the conviction invalidated.
What he describes as "a pacifist philosophy" has become a political and legal struggle.
Living in Chanteloup (Ille-et-Vilaine), Hervé has been a fan of naturism for a long time.
Tuesday morning, it is fully dressed and accompanied by his wife that this retired mechanic sat on the benches of the Rennes Court of Appeal.
The Breton, who hoped for release, attended without saying a word when the deliberations were read.
The court of appeal found him guilty of repeated sexual exhibition and sentenced him to three months in prison, one more than what had been required during the hearing at the end of September.
The court of appeal also revoked a previous reprieve, transforming the sentence into six months in prison.
Stunned, the 61-year-old naturist does not yet know how he will have to serve this sentence.
“But if you have to go to jail,
In his small town located south of Rennes, this former mechanic is well known to the locals.
He regularly goes for a walk on the banks of the Venon pond, halfway between Chanteloup and Corps-Nuds (it can't be invented).
“I feel like they want to bring me to my knees.
The people who filed a complaint against me, I have known them for a very long time.
I don't know what they have against me.
They reproach me for my nudity but it is not sexualized.
“Hervé assures that he undresses “when the weather allows it” and he does it “outside of peak hours”.
He is always equipped with a textile, which he uses to hide from the wolf when he comes across people.
“They want to harm me.
I am not an exhibitionist, I am a naturist.
There is nothing sexualized in my practice.
»
"We're not doing anything wrong"
The charges against him date back to the summer and fall of 2016. A retired couple and a resting policeman crossed his path around the famous pond.
The first time, the respondent was on a walk with his grandson.
Faced with the pensioner's nudity, the residents filed a complaint for sexual exhibition, shocked to cross paths with a completely naked man.
When they were heard by the gendarmes of Bain-de-Bretagne, the complainants recognized that the former mechanic had hidden his private parts with clothing.
Already convicted three times for sexual exhibition Hervé does not intend to stop his practice.
“Quite the contrary.
It has become a militant act.
I continue, because it is not normal to be treated like this.
I walk around, sometimes with my wife, we don't do anything wrong.
No, it shouldn't be shocking.
When we see everything we are exposed to today.
Everything young people can see on their smartphones.
I don't have to hide,” says the retiree.
Defended by a lawyer from Rennes, he has already made it known that he would go to cassation and even to the European Court of Human Rights.
He is not the first to receive a prison sentence.
A 20-year-old young man had been sentenced to one year in prison by the Lorient Criminal Court for having undressed to sunbathe on a public beach in Carnac (Morbihan).
In his fight for nudity, Hervé can count on the support of the Naturist Movement.
Created a year ago, this association which has 200 members fights to "respect the law".
Its president Jean-François Feunteun relies on the reform of the Penal Code, in 1994, and the disappearance of the article on public contempt of decency, to argue.
“Nudism is not an act of a sexual nature, it is a pacifist philosophy.
A philosophy protected by European texts signed by France.
Normally, simple nudity is no longer reprehensible.
We are facing an abuse of power”.
Jean-François Feunteun, president of the Naturist Movement.
His association closely follows the case of Hervé, but also that of the more publicized Peter Misch, a Franco-German naturist convicted in the Vaucluse, who seized the European Court of Human Rights.
The movement hopes that the release pronounced in Gironde in September will set a precedent.
The Bordeaux Court of Appeal had invalidated the conviction of a man, found guilty of sexual exhibition for having stripped naked in the shelter of a dike in the Arcachon basin.
“There is a real cacophony of the judicial system”, tackles Jean-François Feunteun.
And to those who tell him that places are specially reserved for naturists, the president replies frankly: “Imagine that we say that to religious groups.
By saying that, they want to put us on the sidelines of society.
Hervé agrees.
“I'm not going to take my car for miles when I have a quiet natural site right next to my house.
At Chanteloup, Hervé has not finished stripping.
Planet
Marseille: The Calanque des Pierres Tombées becomes officially naturist, and other sites could follow it
By the Web
Why are there more and more “dick pics”, pictures of penises, on TikTok?
Company
reindeer
Brittany
Nudity
Nudism
Justice
court of appeal
Exhibitionism