Three children who were supposed to go to Rennes by train from Lille were disembarked at Roissy. If the SNCF claims to have acted for their safety, the parents have filed a handrail.
Saturday April 27, three children aged 13, 11 and 8 took a train in Lille towards Rennes where their respective mothers were to pick them up. These three children are used to making this trip during school holidays. They were registered with the SNCF’s “Junior et Cie” service, which allows children to be with supervisors during their journey. Unfortunately, they did not complete their journey. The journey for the three children stopped at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle station, only an hour after their departure from Lille. The three young people were taken off the train and their parents had to take the road urgently to pick them up at a police station.
The children found themselves in such a situation because they were not registered at the station on the day of departure. The father of the first two children recognized him from The voice of the North : “There was a major accident on the Belgian highway which impacted my journey and I arrived late for this recording. But the train was also late so I was able to get my children on board and report their presence at the controller, their ticket was validated, I wanted to register them but there were too many people and a lot of tension,” he said. According to the SNCF report, the train was, in fact, 16 minutes late.
The father adds that he spoke with an employee on board the train before leaving his children. “My son is old enough to travel alone and she tells me ‘yes, your son can accompany your daughter,'” he explained to RMC, knowing that his children would not be supervised by the crew. They were shocked to see armed police officers board the train to come and pick them up.
The SNCF defends itself
The SNCF ensures that parents arrive only three minutes before departure while the “Junior et Cie” service requires them to arrive at least one hour in advance. “In the present case, the children put on board were therefore traveling alone, without being under the responsibility and accompanied by an adult as is nevertheless obligatory,” lamented the railway company to BFMTV. Following this failure to register, the children were handed over to the police because “the conditions to guarantee the child’s safety were unfortunately not met by the parents”, according to the SNCF.
The father of the third child, for his part, refuted such accusations, claiming to have arrived well in advance but that he had no knowledge of the registration process. “Usually, they beep the ticket when we get on the train. The host asked us to let all the registered children pass. We waited and when it was our turn, he told us that there were three left minutes before departure and he could no longer record my daughter,” he explained. In both cases, the parents do not understand why the SNCF team let their children go, only to finally disembark them an hour later. They then decided to file a complaint against the SNCF.