In the Pays-Haut, a 33-year-old man who is in a relationship and has lived with his partner’s three children for three years has lost control. It is about 5 am on May 27, 2021 when the thirty-year-old who is preparing to leave for work enters the room of his sixteen-year-old daughter-in-law. He approaches, strokes her buttocks through her pajamas and then inserts her hand into her panties. Petrified, the teenager barely dares to breathe. The touch lasts a minute or two and then the stepfather leaves the room without a word. The young woman, deeply shocked, hastens to wake up her brother to tell him what just happened. Together, they call their mother away for a few days in southwestern France. The reaction is immediate. The father-in-law, who does not dispute the facts without explaining them, is ordered to leave the family home and never set foot there again.
dissociative amnesia
Heading the Thionville Criminal Court, the unprecedented 30-year-old assures us it only happened once. He explains that he doesn’t really remember what happened as if he were in a trance. Psychiatric analysis evokes a possible “dissociative amnesia” specifying that this could be simulated. The defendant has no more explanations to give to the court than he had during his hearing. “We have no words, no explanation, continues Brice Partouche, Thionville’s attorney. We always have in mind that it could happen again ”. The accused was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment, fully accompanied by a two-year suspension of probation, with the obligation to compensate the Thionvilloise Association for assistance to victims (Atav), the prohibition to enter contact with the minor and registration of sexual offenders in the national file.
