Cédric Jubillar, still incarcerated, must be questioned by the judges this Friday, December 3, 2021. His children’s lawyer, Laurent Boguet, who is rare in the media field to protect his clients, has agreed to answer our questions. Maintenance.
Me Laurent Boguet is the Jubillar children’s lawyer. Their father, Cédric, imprisoned after the disappearance of his wife Delphine, will once again be heard this Friday, December 3, 2021 by the judges. In this case, the eldest of the two Jubillar children was also auditioned. But how to reconcile investigation and investigation with child protection? We took stock with Me Laurent Boguet.
Louis was auditioned by the investigating judges. We can, without deflowering the secrecy of the investigation, consider that the child came to corroborate by detailing them in more detail the first statements he had made to the investigation services in December and January 2020.
I think I can say that this young boy, who is in fact a Little Prince confronted with the planet Justice, was able to express himself freely in a setting that offered the maximum of precautions. And he is able to affirm things that come into dissonance and which even make Cédric Jubillar’s words perhaps incoherent. There will be things to check, it is a child who is able, essentially in terms of the context, to indicate that the couple did not live happy hours since they were in the process of separation and that this could be express in contact with children.
He’s a seven-year-old today who is being asked to summon traumatic memories of a night when he was only six. He suffers from the disappearance of his mother. He is able to express the lack he feels in relation to his father’s absence. He is at the heart of a tragedy that could be described as Racinian.
As we asked him: that he give answers, and preferably coherent ones, with regard to the elements which appear in the file in an objective manner (the testimonies including that of his own son) so that justice can prosper and the truth burst out. We don’t owe his children a half-truth. Eliyah and Louis need to know how to look at their father.
Precisely, that is the problem, that is to say that when the child answers the questions, he is not judgmental, he is in the absence of his parents, including his father, necessarily of his mother. From there, he saw it with pain. He is not old enough for words, he is not old enough to express his feelings, but I can say that this child is in reality in great pain.
Certainly. I am more than surprised, I disapprove of this approach because it must be clearly understood that these children, above all else, are the victims of the situation. They are totally immersed in the heart of a tragedy. Whatever justice actually decides, whatever truth it manages to reveal to them, these children will have lost their mother and perhaps tomorrow their father, if he were to be found guilty of being the executioner and the one who makes their own mother disappear.
It is a status that is completely unsurpassable and, given the young age of the children: we are talking about a child who was six years old at the time of the events and his little sister, two years old, they must absolutely be preserved. I used the expression “Little Prince in relation to planet Justice”, it is up to justice to make the effort to put itself within the reach of children and certainly not the other way around.
Whereby things are complicated because this young child is a witness, among others, of the general context and more surely of what could have happened in the hours which preceded the disappearance of his mother. I wanted with Master Malika Chmani to attach myself so that, at least on the ground of the form, the maximum of precautions can be taken so that the word of the child, without one having to sanctify in terms of its content, or collected under conditions that do not allow us to suspect that it can be oriented. It’s fragile, the word of a child. It is based on the memory of a child who is six years old, so it is necessarily fragile.
And this little boy, I derive great satisfaction from this, was able to be heard at the stage of his hearing before the examining magistrates in conditions which satisfied us perfectly since the ad hoc administrator, who is an extremely experienced person, that the two councils were next to little Louis and that he was able to express himself, with all the necessary patience, respecting the times of concentration, deconcentration, his need to attend to other occupations, to change of atmosphere… All these times have been perfectly integrated and respected.
From there, he delivers things to us that it will be appropriate to analyze because what he tells us does not at all resonate with what Cédric Jubillar asserts. So it is indeed a fundamental difficulty… in any case a reality in this case that the investigating judges will endeavor to exploit and explore. Very clearly the first declarations of Cédric Jubillar do not correspond to the conceptual description, to the habits, to the routines of the parents such as Louis was able to perceive them. There are things that are vehemently asserted by Cédric Jubillar that are not at all corroborated by the statements of his own son, in particular on the course of this tragic evening of December 15.
We are vigilant Cerberus and it’s true that the temptations of some, in particular the press, which we understood to be very interested since it is the relay of a national questioning… people are curious, for use a neutral term, in any case interested in this dossier. This is how.
There were blunders that we try to systematically eliminate because we do not accept, in particular, that images whatever they are when they are not blurred, can be broadcast in the case of a child of six years to whom it is necessary to leave the possibility of living his ordeal.
Obviously, this child has corners of blue sky: when he kicks a soccer ball, when his teachers ask him, he can draw with his friends. All these are moments that will have to be preserved because once the judicial page of this case is closed, Louis and Eliyah will continue to live in absence and in the pain that reality inflicts on them.
The difficulty and perhaps the complexity of the task that has been set for us is perhaps that this child, he says what he says. I urge people to hear that this little seven-year-old boy is not judgmental. Above all, he expresses a lack at the level of his parents.
He is able to affirm a certain number of truths. He can factually evoke things that have happened. He is not in the criticism of this or that of his parents. In reality he suffers from this lack. And yet, I wouldn’t want him to have to carry on his shoulders the status of prosecution witness who would in some way overwhelm Cédric Jubillar in a definitive way.
This is not the meaning of our intervention, we are completely reserved. We were able, Me Chmani and myself, to recall on the occasion of the various hearings which shell this procedure, that what this child could deliver should be analyzed with the necessary prudence because it is the word of a child . This is not an adult speaking.
And more surely still, within the framework of a general context because it is out of the question to come and explain to this little boy that everything depends on his word. He is there to deliver many things in reality: the general context, how this family life was organized, what place he took in it, what was the behavior of such and such a parent (…).
This kid who is extremely lively and full of mischief, withdraws into himself when the disappearance of his mother and the incarceration of his father are mentioned, without his being able to imagine what this word covers. They are not there. He misses them. He is hosted as part of a completely loving family but the fact remains that on December 16, 2021, they woke up with a huge hole inside their body. Their life has changed.
What is important is that we can evolve bearing in mind that, independently of the necessary approach (use of procedural means, investigative techniques, interrogations, hearings), there is a kind of bubble, a kind of sphere that protects the innocence of these children as much as possible. Even if it is perhaps a derisory wish. I don’t want them to be abused out of clumsiness.
Nor do I want to imagine that they can be mistreated out of partisan interest. These children go through a procedure with the weight of immense suffering on their shoulders and it is not a question of imposing new responsibilities on them. We have to spare them as much as possible. Louis was in capacity, his little sister is not concerned by the evocation of the facts, perhaps fortunately for her… Louis, he has this particularity of being regarded as a witness. A witness whose statements may be of some interest, but for all that, they are clues, additional investigations which will make it possible to establish the innocence or the guilt of Cédric Jubillar.
Louis’ statements, and I want him to hear it through this interview, I have already told him and I will repeat to him tirelessly: it is not he who will send his father to prison.
What was touching is that, upstream, the two investigating magistrates who have experience in the management of children’s cases (one of them was a judge for children for a long time and I think it is a very important and very rich experience to approach this type of file) said: “you know, Louis, we are here to work and find your mother, who we know you miss, at all costs”.
It’s important because I believe that the child needs to hear it through the media brouhaha, from the entourage that is his. I believe that a voice coming from the world of justice who said to him: we are doing everything, we are sparing no trouble to be able to explain, to be able to establish a truth and above all, in his mind, to be able to bring your mother back to you whatever whatever the state. It’s terrible but in reality that’s it, it’s essential because Louis will hear it. These words will resonate.
And at the end of the hearing, it is a moment theoretically covered by the secrecy of the investigation, but in reality it presents such a degree of humanity that I believe I am authorized to speak to you about it, it was said to Louis: “You know, your mom hasn’t abandoned you and your little sister”. And he received the message without finding the words but in the look he returned these sentences were perceived as a blessing. He probably needed to hear them and besides, he will let go in a breath: “it did me good to talk”.