Nordahl Lelandais, sentenced in February 2022 for the kidnapping and murder of Maëlys, had a heavy history. The psychiatrists who heard him in prison described him as a manipulative, perverse man and a sexual predator who cannot stand frustration. Indeed, if he denies having sexually assaulted the daughter of Jennifer and Joachim de Araujo, he had shortly before committed acts on members of his entourage, as indicated by the investigation of 7 to 8 on TF1 this August 21 2022.
Maître Caroline Rémond returns to the attack of which her client says she was the victim: “The facts take place during the funeral of the father of this young girl. She is 14 years old, she smokes in secret from her mother. Nordahl Lelandais tells him I’m coming to smoke a cigarette with you. At that moment, under the pretext of a comforting hug since she was crying, he began to pass his hand over her breasts. She pushes him away. (…) He continues and goes down the back of her back and puts his hand on her buttocks which he touches insistently, with a connotation which she realizes at the time since she is only 14 year. She realizes that this is not normal. She finally manages to free herself but Nordahl Lelandais catches her. He said to him: ‘If you say anything, I will kill you.’“
This attack took place a few months before the murder of Maëlys, in April 2017. On July 1, 2019, she filed a complaint and the man was taken into custody on these facts on February 7, 2020. The investigation showed that the man was consulting child pornography sites and two months after this event, he also assaulted the daughters of two people around him, aged 4 and 7. Maître Rémond explains that the dangerous individual justifies his actions by taking narcotics and alcohol which make his discernment impossible: “IHe no longer distinguishes between a woman and a child.“
For the time being, the one who has been sentenced to life imprisonment with twenty-two years of security, as well as for the sexual assault of two of his little cousins, has not admitted to having sexually abused Maëlys, aged at the period of 8 and a half years.