To structure their investigation, the gendarmes had to create two charts. The first looks a bit like a class photo board. But instead of being stored in a school’s archives, the three dozen portraits of young boys were assembled in a police report in Villefranche-sur-Saône, in the southern Beaujolais area. Snapshots of the children – all between the ages of 3 and 9 at the time of the incidents – were captured in the video-recorded depositions: hoodies and t-shirts, tousled brown hair, anxious and serious expressions.
Four columns make up the second chart. The leftmost lists the first and last names of the victims. It is followed by columns indicating the various offenses: recording or producing pornographic images of a minor, sexual assault, and rape. Investigators either marked “yes,” noting the dates, or left the box blank. In total, each category totals about 60 or so incidents. All of them were committed and filmed by the same man, Romain G., in the village of Lucenay, between 2020 and 2024.
Despite its staggering scale, at the heart of the case are three fourth-grade children who told their parents about assaults committed by their school friend’s father during sleepovers at his home. After being taken in for questioning in December 2024 following these accusations, Romain G. was released, but later attempted to take his own life. While being treated in the hospital, he confessed to having abused a much larger number of victims and to having filmed 200 videos depicting the violence. He has been held in jail since then, and on April 10, was formally charged for offenses involving a total of 34 victims. According to the videos recovered by the police, he raped or forced sexual acts on at least 23 of them, and filmed all of them naked.
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