A French teacher expatriated in Singapore has been on trial since Friday, November 3 before the Paris Departmental Criminal Court to answer for rape and sexual assault on more than twenty young Malaysian boys between January 2014 and October 2017.
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Without showing any emotion, Jean-Christophe Quenot apologizes. “ We can’t go back, but I offer my most sincere apologies to the victims », Launches the fifty-year-old at the start of the hearing. Since joining a support group, he has understood that a “ yes in exchange for money » did not constitute consent. “ I am aware today that I am sick », Continues the accused.
Brown hair combed back, thin glasses on a dull face, wearing a brown sweater, Jean-Christophe Quenot, 56 years old, faces charges of rape and sexual assault of 25 Malaysian boys aged 10 to 17 years old between January 2014 and October 2017. The president of the departmental criminal court, Laurent Raviot, noted 70 offenses (sexual assault) and seven crimes (rape) against the victims, identified only by the nickname that Jean-Christophe Quenot assigned to them in the notebooks where he recounted his sexual experiences.
This single childless man is only being tried for the acts committed in Malaysia, even though he is suspected of having committed sexual abuse and rape on at least fifty minors in several countries – Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines , India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia – for around thirty years. “ We have already identified around thirty boys in Thailand. But we have not started working on Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines and Singapore », Explains an investigator who says that the French teacher took advantage of his free time to travel.
Jean-Christophe Quenot was arrested in flagrante delicto in February 2019 by Thai police, alerted by the father of a missing child, while he was in a Bangkok hotel room with two 14-year-old boys. The police also discovered a camera and a computer with child pornography content. He was released after a few days after paying bail of 300,000 bahts (around 8,000 euros) in cash. Equipped with his French passport, he then managed to leave Thailand illegally via Malaysia to reach France. He was finally arrested at his family home in Besançon on March 30, 2019.
Four years after his arrest, the police have still not finished analyzing the 174,000 photos and videos taken by Jean-Christophe Quenot and the notebooks in which he describes his sexual activities in detail. Material that the accused took care to send to himself by post before fleeing Malaysia for France. This file, “it’s never seen before,” repeats the investigator. In the box, Jean-Christophe Quenot takes notes.
(And with AFP)