The trial of the French professor of Evaëlle, Pascale B., opened this Monday for harassment on minor. The prosecution requested 18 months suspended prison sentence this Tuesday.
After two days of trial, on March 10 and 11 at the Pontoise court, the requisitions fell for the French professor Pascale B. Tuesday at the end of the day, the prosecutor required 18 months in prison suspended, as well as the final prohibition to exercise the teaching profession. “I would like to say my relief to have finally had this hearing, the trial, in a serene and calm atmosphere. I was able to express myself. It is a form of relief,” said the accused. Deliberated, the judgment will be rendered on April 10. Accused of moral harassment against Evaëlle and two other students educated in sixth in the Isabelle Autissier college in Herblay (Val-d’Oise) between 2018 and 2019, the teacher faces two years in prison and 30,000 euros fine.
The college student had 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. During the requisitions, the prosecutor said that the French professor had “threw in pasture” Evaëlle. Describing a teacher in a position of “all power”, she deplored: “The degree of lack of empathy of Madame Mes me, continues to amaze me.” And to conclude: “This harassment has made students’ harassing behavior socially acceptable.”
Before that, the lawyer for the parents of the middle school had expressed himself at length on the occasion of her pleading. “Let us think of the abyssal loss of Evaëlle’s parents, the life she should have had, if she had not ended her life. Remember the responsibility of the institution. Let us think about these fateful moments when in the classroom, Evaëlle lost hope. Let us finally think of the attitude of Madame B. who does not doubt for a moment, who has left the harasses and that is relentless. had launched Me Delphine Meillet. And to note: “This hardening, I only found it at the Assizes in the face of hardened criminals and terrorists without remorse.”
The personality and the journey of the teacher sift
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 she 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,” listed the judge. If the accused agreed, this complimentary portrait was 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”, quoted the lawyer. In response, the defendant spoke of 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 put a little bit of humor. He was not someone who was screaming. He was someone smiling, 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,” said 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, among other things. If Pascale B. admits that she is “divisive”, she put 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 did not shake up the convictions of the professor who considers that he had made mistakes “to 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 spoke of the various 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 said. 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.