• Tried for two weeks by the Assize Court of Ille-et-Vilaine, a former magician was found guilty of rape and sexual assault on 27 children and sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment. 

  • For more than fifteen years, Sébastien C. abused children aged 3 to 15 whose parents he knew perfectly well.

  • The cold attitude and without empathy particularly marked the victims of this trial which was held behind closed doors in Rennes.

The question of guilt was unmistakable.

Judged for acts of rape and sexual assault on 27 children, Sébastien C. had already admitted "90% of the acts" with which he was accused even before being heard before the Assize Court for minors of Ille-et-Vilaine .

For fifteen years, the former magician committed the worst atrocities on the children of those who were his friends, on his sister or even his cousin and his niece.

This Friday, the Ille-et-Vilaine Assize Court sentenced him to eighteen years' imprisonment, with a two-thirds security period.

He will also be subject to a ten-year socio-judicial follow-up at the end of his sentence. 

The day before, the Advocate General had requested a sentence of 15 to 18 years, to the great surprise of certain lawyers convinced that the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison would be imposed.

Because the number of victims is appalling.

Because the accused acted as a repeat offender after a first conviction in 2011. And because he had not hesitated to speak himself about his "operating mode" and his "impulses" which drove him to commit his crimes.

To his closest friend, he confided that he considered himself "unbalanced" because of his attraction to young children.

He had spoken the same words to the police when he went to the Rennes police station in November 2017 to confide his abominable secrets.

“He has no empathy, he is chilling”

During the fifteen days of the trial, this former magician, now 36, did not evade questions.

Hair shaved to the side, eyes straight, he responded to every accusation, remembering his every move with blood-chilling precision.

In the ranks of the lawyers of the victims, one evokes the coldness with which the defendant managed these confrontations with the parents of these children.

At the bar, the eyes of the witnesses were fleeting while the accused spoke with serenity.

“He has a somewhat clinical, very detached way of explaining himself.

He has no empathy, he is chilling, ”confided Me Pierre-Yves Launay on the eve of the verdict.


In each case, the jurors heard the parents of the young victims who were aged between 3 and 15 at the time of the events.

Men and women steeped in remorse for having “seen nothing” of the actions of the man who was their friend, their cousin, their confidant.

Incarcerated since his first police custody at the end of 2017, Sébastien C. had called some just before “surrender”.

He had explained to them that he was about to go to prison for a long time and sometimes he had confessed to what he had made their children endure.

“I never had an alert, never saw anything.

The children demanded it, they adored it.

Nothing foreshadowed such horror, ”testified Sandra, whose two boys were victims of touching.

A “perverse personality” according to a psychiatrist

After getting closer to the parents until he became their closest friend, the magician offered to babysit their children, sometimes inviting himself to sleep, going so far as to share the same holidays.

A skilled manipulator of balloons and magic tricks, he impressed his victims.

For years, he worked as a camp leader despite his first conviction.

Each time, he spent a lot of time with his young victims before taking action.

Very often, he gave them his phone to distract them and abused them.

"A state of hypnotic dissociation", according to a psychologist.

Faced with these acts, all the children remained silent.

So as not to be scolded or cause their parents grief.

The psychiatrist who looked into the case of the accused did not hesitate on the terms.

For him, Sebastien C.

is "an evil personality".

“In the United States, we would speak of a psychopath”, slips a lawyer for the civil parties.

The fifteen days of this trial at the assizes will have enabled the families to obtain a good number of answers to their questions.

But this trial behind closed doors will not have settled everything.

Why did the parents of the accused not denounce him when their daughter explained that she had been raped by her older brother?

And why was this man already known to the courts not heard in January 2014 when a new complaint for sexual assault was filed by a mother?

“I asked the question to the investigator.

I was the only one.

And I did not have an answer, ”assures Me Pierre-Yves Launay.

It took until the end of 2017 for the file to be reactivated in the services of the vice squad of Rennes.

“A huge miss”.

Feeling stuck, the magician preferred to confess everything.

Since this 2014 complaint and until his incarceration, Sébastien C. had wreaked havoc, analyzed a lawyer.

Seventeen of the 27 victims were abused during those four years.

So many shattered young lives that condemnation alone will not be able to relieve.

Justice

Rennes: “He is chilling”… Accused of rape and assault on 27 children, the magician is awaiting his sentence

Justice

Rennes: "Nothing foreshadowed such horror" ... Parents, collateral victims of the magician's rape

Why "20 Minutes" does not give a name

To deal with this trial,

20 Minutes

will only mention the first name of the accused.

A choice assumed to protect the identity of the victims of this file.

  • reindeer

  • Brittany

  • child crime

  • Child

  • Magic

  • assize court

  • Rape

  • sexual assault

  • Justice