A gendarme source has confirmed the leak of a sealed criminal record, and the resulting fallout is exactly the kind of mess you’d expect when justice gets tangled up with bureaucracy. The suspect, a 37-year-old repeat offender, was charged last week with the abduction and murder of a 12-year-old girl in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. What’s now public is a file that shows he was on parole for a previous sexual assault, a detail the prosecution had fought to keep under wraps pending trial.
The document, a 14-page rap sheet, was posted on a far-right forum and spread across social media within hours. It lists charges dating back a decade, including two counts of sexual assault on minors and one of indecent exposure. The suspect’s identity had been protected by a 2023 law that automatically seals records of suspects under certain conditions, but the leak has blown that clean out of the water.
The National Police Commissioner, a man who has not returned my calls, issued a statement condemning the leak as a violation of judicial procedure. But on the ground, the mood is different. Protests erupted last night outside the Palais de Justice in Paris.
I counted nearly 200 people, many carrying signs that read “Les juges protègent les criminels” and “Honor the victims, not the system.” A woman I spoke to, who gave her name only as Marie, said her 14-year-old daughter was friends with the victim. She told me: “They knew what he was.
They knew. And they let him walk. We have a right to know who is living next to us.
The system protects the predator, not the child.” Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti has announced an internal investigation into the leak, but that’s theatre. The real scandal is that this man was free at all.
Court documents I have seen show that his parole was approved by a panel of three judges, despite a recommendation from the prison psychologist that he posed a high risk of reoffending. The panel’s reasoning was that he had completed a rehabilitation programme and had stable housing. That stable housing was a council flat in the same neighbourhood where the victim lived.
The suspect’s lawyer, Maître Jean-Pierre Garnier, told me his client maintains his innocence and that the leak amounts to a smear campaign. Sure. Meanwhile, the National Assembly is in chaos.
Marine Le Pen called for the resignation of the Justice Minister. The President’s party is scrambling to distance itself, but the damage is done. The question no one wants to answer is this: how many more sealed files are out there, hiding the truth from a public that has a right to know?
I’ll be tracking the money, the connections, the cover-ups. This story is far from over.
