“Three minutes away. Three too many … I will blame myself all my life, ”said the teacher during her trial at first instance, in 2019. Élisabeth Jaccard, teacher and director of a schoolgirl with Down’s syndrome, was sentenced on appeal this Tuesday in Bordeaux to a four-month suspended prison sentence for “manslaughter”. On January 8, 2015, one of his students was defenestrated by his “psychotic” classmate, in the private school of Sacré-Coeur in Périgueux, Dordogne.
The fall of little Laly, eight years old, from a height of five meters, had occurred in an establishment which welcomes children with psychomotor disabilities and/or behavioral disorders in a class specializing in inclusion. school. At the time of the events, the little girl had left the room of this class, once her work was finished, to join the adjoining playroom where her little friend was, far from the eyes of their teacher. The lack of supervision at this precise moment is “a serious fault” on the part of the teacher, considers the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux.
The Court also requested the payment by the State, represented by the rectorate, of more than 132,000 euros in damages for “moral damage” and “funeral expenses” to the victim’s family, “in deduction of sums” already allocated by the administrative justice, which had condemned the social assistance to the childhood of Dordogne to damages.
“I couldn’t see the children in the next room. It haunts me, “said Elisabeth Jaccard during the hearing at the end of March before bursting into tears, claiming “to have heard nothing” while she looked at the work of the other students. The school life assistant was on his side gone to lunch.
A child known for his violence
For Advocate General Céline Raignault, this director “could not ignore” that the little boy “required increased supervision. She had indicated that he was becoming truly unmanageable”. The child had also already beaten the girl with Down syndrome on the school stairs on the grounds that “she was shorter than him”. Instructions had been given to monitor him and a meeting was scheduled to propose his transfer to a medical-educational establishment.
Other facts prior to his arrival at the school had not, however, been brought to his attention by the social services of the department. For the parents and the director, the shock had been twofold: they learned that in 2013, two years earlier, the boy had already pushed a two-year-old baby over the railing, taking advantage of the temporary absence of his nanny. The little girl had come out with a few fractures. But the social worker in charge of the boy’s follow-up had not reported him to his new school, citing professional secrecy.
The director assured her at the hearing: “if she had been informed, she would have refused to register it”. At first instance, she had been acquitted by the Angoulême court, which had justified its decision by “the absence of serious fault”.