The trial of the French professor Pascale B. opened this Monday for harassment on a minor. Testimonies on the teacher are contrasting.
For the first time, a teacher is accused of harassment against a student in a trial. Pascale B. is tried from March 10 to 11 at the Pontoise Criminal Court for tormented three minor students in the sixth between 2018 and 2019 at the Isabelle Autissier college in Herblay (Val-d’Oise). Among them, Evaëlle, an 11 -year -old girl. The college student ended her days by hanging after months of bullying from her comrades on June 21, 2019. To this is added tensions with her French teacher Pascale B., suspected of having “humiliated him regularly” in front of her class.
The former teacher, now 62 years old, had also been prosecuted for “manslaughter”, before benefiting from a dismissal for this count at the end of the investigation. The harassment of which it is accused is therefore considered to have no connection with suicide. This Monday, her personality and his professional career were analyzed by the president of the court.
“From 1988 to 2016, there are only positive assessments: attendance, punctuality, demanding, dynamic”, lists the judge. If the accused agrees, this complimentary portrait is quickly marred by some remarks of two former colleagues. Dominique C. thus assures “that everyone knew that she liked to lower the weak students and preferred problem students”. For her part, Sylvie affirms that “she could go on a child and humiliate him in front of everyone, because she was very theatrical, arguing that the pupils in difficulty did not have their place in the establishment”, quotes the lawyer. In response, the defendant evokes a reciprocal enmity with these two teachers.
Students treated with “nulls”, “teubés”, “moron” …
Monday afternoon, three school life assistants who worked with the accused spoke of a “benevolent”, “kind” and “caregiver” teacher. “Sometimes there were complex situations in class, she was putting a little bit of humor. He was not someone who was screaming. He was a smiling person, who could worry about her students in class,” said one of them who worked alongside her from 2004 to 2010, stressing “the presence” of the professor.
Despite an “exceptional course and very well rated during his 35 years of career”, the way of teaching of Pascale B. is far from being unanimous. “It is someone who was in omnipotence with very specific methods. She stigmatizes certain students by insulting and humiliating them and having her darlings,” says Master Delphine Meillet, lawyer for the parents of Evaëlle.
The pre-adolescent was indeed treated as “zero” and “crazy”, according to testimonies. In the classroom, insults could also rain, such as “Teubés” or “Cretins”, reports a witness to the NEW OBS. Several students also cited sentences that the professor would have held in front of them: “You have no brain,” said the teacher. If Pascale B. admits that she is “divisive”, she puts her words on the account of humor.
According to the principal of the college arrived at the start of the school year following the suicide of Evaëlle, certain elements described it as an “authoritarian and brittle professor”. During the investigation, he had made words from a middle school. The teacher would have said to him, “You go dripping us”, adding that she preferred to have a dog than students. “It is better to stay in school life otherwise there will be a dead man,” said the teacher, according to a school education assistant, whose remarks were reported by West France.
Pascale B. invokes her “freedom of teaching”
These testimonies do not leave the convictions of the professor who considers that “not having made mistakes” towards her students, in an interview with the Parisian. “I am sorry to tell you that I manage my class and my pedagogy as I understand it. We still have freedom of teaching,” she said.
This Tuesday, Pascale B. still recognized clumsy remarks against Evaëlle during an hour of classy life that she organized to tackle the subject of harassment. That day, the teacher asked the students to express their reproaches to Evaëlle so that she could answer their questions. His answers aroused the mockery of his comrades, who treated him as a liar. Deprived, the college student melted into tears. Pascale B. would then have initiated him to stop crying, “badly,” said the student, auditioned in March 2019. “I had to tell him ‘Stop crying’. It was not the sentence to say,” recognizes the ex-professional at the helm.
During the trial, the teacher nevertheless took the opportunity to evoke the different shocks she has experienced since the media coverage of the case: “The most violent for me is this word: guilty of the death of Evaëlle”, she says. Since 2021, the teacher can no longer take lessons to minors and has an obligation of psychological care. Despite this suspension, Pascale B. claims to have nothing to blame: “No, I am not this awful teacher, harassing, taking sadistic pleasure in humiliating them,” she maintains.