Paris (AFP)
In his second book published in 2016, Edouard Louis told of his rape by a lover he met on Christmas Eve.
Almost five years later, this man was tried on Friday for sexual assault and disputes any violence against the novelist.
Edouard Louis is 20 years old and has not yet released the book that will make him famous, "Enfining with Eddy Bellegueule", when, on the evening of December 25, 2012, he went to the police station and filed a complaint for rape and attempted rape. murder.
To the police, he reports having met in the street, coming out of New Years Eve, a man named Reda, who accompanied him to his home.
They had consensual sex, then he realized that his tablet and his phone had disappeared, he says.
Confronted, Reda became threatening, strangled him with a sling and then raped him, he says, adding that he managed to take refuge on the landing before his attacker left the scene.
Tonight, the writer will tell it in "History of violence", published on January 7, 2016. Two days later, the investigation opened in 2012 is relaunched: a suspect, arrested in another case, is confused by his genetic profile .
"I swear to French justice that there has never been violence": Friday afternoon, this man, now 35 years old, is at the bar.
As in many rape cases, the facts were reclassified as "sexual assault", bringing the case to court and not to the assizes.
The head tilted towards an interpreter, this Algerian confirms the meeting with Edouard Louis and recognizes that, without papers and "in the need", he tried to steal the tablet but not the telephone.
"I even undressed to show him that I did not have it on me. He did not believe me", assures the defendant, known under several identities and nicknamed Reda, released at the end of 2016 after eleven months of detention provisional.
"I am exhausted from what happened, I became paranoid. Other than the theft, nothing is true."
- "Judicial truth" -
On the other side of the bar, Edouard Louis, 27, is not there: he is "always afraid", summarizes his lawyer.
During the investigation, the writer, a figure of the radical left and opposed to imprisonment, had twice refused to attend a confrontation and demanded a dismissal.
Cited as a witness, the philosopher Didier Eribon, friend of the writer, speaks of his "state of shock" in the aftermath of the events, describes a "deep, haunting, lasting" trauma.
Its author is not there but the 2016 book, adapted for the theater and translated into several languages, keeps coming back in the debates, mentioned by the witness, cited by the civil party, denounced by the defense.
"We do not judge a book, we judge the facts," warns the prosecutor, calling for a "judicial truth" and not "literary".
Citing the forensic report which had found lesions on the body of Edouard Louis, its "concordant versions" with his "friends, police services, doctors", she requires a sentence of 4 years including 2 years with stay against the accused.
Even today, Edouard Louis still wakes up "with anxieties, phobias, tears", launches his advice Emmanuel Pierrat.
He insists: in the file, "you have at least more than convincing elements which do not relate to literature or subjectivity".
This affair is "polluted" by the novel, ton in reply Marie Dosé for the defense.
De Reda, "we make a culprit anyway," continues the lawyer, for whom there has never been "contradictory debate".
She refers to a private conversation on social networks in which a writer saying he knew Edouard Louis claimed that he had "invented" everything - he then retracted.
"There is only one story, there is only one judicial truth in this file: it is that of doubt", concludes the lawyer, asking for release.
Decision on December 8.
© 2020 AFP