Prosecutors on Thursday asked for a twenty-year prison sentence against a man accused of beating and torturing a two-year-old child nearly to death for two weeks, the main accused of six people who have appeared in Douai for ten days, in the north of France.
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Advocate General Cécile Villoutreix also requested a two-thirds safety period and a 10-year social justice prosecution against this man, who was accused of “acts of torture and barbarism” and admitted the facts.
The defendant, to whom the little boy had been entrusted by his mother in Auberchicourt (North), in December 2018 “demanded” the dynamic of “outrageous, gratuitous violence” on the child for 15 days, the Advocate General pointed out.
In particular, on alcoholic evenings in which the six accused participated to varying degrees, the child had been tied up with scotch tape, used “like a soccer ball”, trampled on, pushed down the stairs or even prevented from sleeping.
The required sentence is less than the maximum statutory sentence of 30 years.
The accused lived emotionally “dry”, had a “terrible” childhood and an IQ “on the border of slight mental weakness”, according to the personality investigator.
Against her partner, Ms Villoutreix sought a 15-year criminal prison sentence with a two-thirds safety period and the full removal of the couple’s parental authority over their five daughters.
For the little boy’s mother, who was specifically accused of failing to report the violence she suffered and failing to treat him immediately after he was rescued, the judge ordered six years in prison with a deposit warrant.
She also requested the complete removal of parental authority over her two sons.
She asked for 12 and 10 years in prison for two men involved in the most violent scenes.
For the sixth defendant, she applied for five years in prison for failure to provide assistance to a person at risk.
The little boy, who was hospitalized on December 18, was placed in an induced coma and suffered from serious head injuries, numerous hematomas and fractures of the pelvis and tibia.
He is now seven years old and is suffering from significant neurological and psychological complications, according to his lawyer Me Alain Reisenthel. “It took him a year to learn what a smile was, two years to learn to walk again.”