It was a week before the disappearance of Maëlys de Araujo, 8 and a half years old. On August 20, 2017, Nordahl Lelandais sneaks into the room where his 6-year-old little cousin Marie * sleeps in the family home in Domessin (Savoie). The rest is projected on the screens of the Assize Court of Isère, Monday, February 7. The sex of a sleeping little girl is filmed close-up by a mobile phone. The accused, head down, does not look at this hand which is his touching. Two minutes and 13 unbearable seconds, which leave the room on the verge of nausea.
The 38-year-old former dog handler, tried for a week for the kidnapping, forcible confinement and murder of little Maëlys de Araujo, is also appearing for this sexual assault and that of another little cousin shortly before, on July 11, 2017. Emilie*, her goddaughter, was 4 years old at the time. An almost identical video was shown on Friday. These two files, deleted by Nordahl Lelandais before his arrest, were found by investigators using his two iPhones. For the prosecution and the civil parties, they constitute the motive for the kidnapping of the girl during a wedding in Pont-de-Beauvoisin (Isère). “Why did he put her in his car? It wasn’t to show her his dogs! With what happened to our children, it’s not possible”said the mother of Emilie *, Friday.
Nordahl Lelandais affirms it despite everything “solemnly” : he “there was no sexual desire with Maëlys de Araujo”. As one of her last companions at the helm, Anouchka, said, “you always need proof, with him, otherwise he won’t admit anything”. However, evidence of rape or sexual assault on Maëlys, there is none. The girl’s body was found six months later, thanks to the discovery of a bloodstain in the trunk of the Audi A3 of the ex-soldier, forcing him to confess. But as for the murder of Corporal Arthur Noyer, whose body had also been located late, Nordahl Lelandais is tied to the convoluted version of an involuntary homicide.
Confronted with the child pornography images he himself made, the accused cannot deny the obvious. Without losing his cool, he still dares to explain that it’s only “sex” and that at that moment, he does not make the difference between his “female partners and little girls”. “I was a coward, I did it when they were sleeping because I wouldn’t be able to do that on a little girl who was awake”he bounces, in reference to Maëlys. “Maëlys de Araujo, she is not asleep but she is available because she is alone with you in the car. Can we ask ourselves the question of her body being available to you when she is alone with you?” reminds the president. Valérie Blain gets the same monolithic denials.
Faced with a child pornography photo found on his computer – and classified as such by Interpol – he argues, going so far as to suggest zooming in: “To me, she wasn’t a little kid, she was a teenager in the face.” When Fabien Rajon, the lawyer for the mother and sister of Maëlys de Araujo, projects the equivocal photo of a little girl “whose age can be estimated from 8 to 12 years” found in her phone, Nordahl Lelandais argues: she is not performing oral sex but “smoke a bong. You can see the smoke in the bottom right.” But to the question of Yves Crespin, lawyer for the associations L’Enfant bleu and La Voix de l’enfant –“Do you admit that you had pedophile inclinations?”– the man in the box nods: “Yes.” The word is out. And taken over by his own lawyer, Alain Jakubowicz.
“It’s an important word, the word pedophilia. Acts are acts of pedophilia and you have to accept it.”
Alain Jakubowicz at Nordahl Lelandaisin front of the Assize Court of Isère
Will his client go further? Nothing is less sure. Pressed with questions, he does not enlighten the court on the origin of this attraction for children. “Pedophile abusers reproduce what they suffered”, emphasizes Yves Crespin. Was he himself a victim of sexual abuse as a child, as a teenager, in the army or elsewhere? Never ever, swears the person concerned. Neither the investigation nor the debates shed light on this point. His mother, who had mentioned a change in behavior when he was in fourth sport-studies at the Châtelard college (Savoie), confided on Monday that after the discovery of videos of sexual assaults on his cousins, his son would have says: “Mom, I’ve been sick for a long time, I’ve never talked about it.”
Does the key to the Nordahl Lelandais enigma lie in these silenced pedophile impulses? Or is it an equation with several unknowns? With his well-groomed outfit, his oral fluency and his former rather rich social life, this man accused of the worst does not have the typical profile of a predator. When his relatives ask him at the bar to explain how their friend “Noo”, “helpful”, “funny” and “benevolent”, at “switched overnight to the side of the barrier where we cannot recover it”the accused does not rewind the thread and sticks to the year 2017. “I was a wanderer, I was lost”, he repeats in a loop. The exchanges with the court and the testimonies give an insight into his daily life that year. A night owl, the thirty-something unemployed and without a stable companion spends his days sleeping, watching pornographic sites and taking cocaine. He leads a parallel life on heterosexual and gay dating sites, on which he renames himself “Jordan”.
On the night of April 11 to 12, 2017, he hitchhiked Arthur Noyer in Chambéry (Savoie) and killed him. July 11, “you are in your circle of protection, your castle, and you strike your goddaughter. On August 20, you are still at work [sur son autre petite cousine]. Have you thought about it? Because afterwards, there is August 27…” summarizes Laurent Boguet, lawyer for Maëlys’ father.
“It feels like the car has gone crazy, the engine has raced and there are no more brakes, it’s going 200 km/h and there’s the concrete wall.”
Laurent Boguet, lawyer for Joachim de Araujoin front of the Assize Court of Isère
Nordahl Lelandais, who “never questioned himself and always blamed others”according to his old friend David heard on Wednesday, situates “engine acceleration” from the corporal’s murder. “Once you’ve killed a man, for whatever reason, you don’t live the same.” Nordahl Lelandais, who has always denied the sexual dimension of this first acting out, does not explain the slow drift that preceded it, the successive sentimental ruptures, the professional failures accumulated since his departure from the army, his chaotic schooling aborted in mechanical CAP. “He deceived his world. One cannot become in two or three months, not even in one year, an assassin and a rapist”tackles the mother of little Emilie *.
In the Maëlys case, Nordahl Lelandais is not being prosecuted for premeditation or rape. He will be questioned on the evening of August 26-27 on Friday. On the pedocriminal acts of which he is accused, he acknowledges “that a barrier has jumped” but in no case did he want “go further, do harm”. Hiding behind his inability to “answer the questions”, it refers to expert psychiatrists and psychologists, who will be heard next week. In one of their reports, the latter believe that we “cannot rule out that he has antisocial personality disorder and paraphilic disorder [perversion sexuelle] type of pedophilia much more characterized and ancient than he claims”. With one feature: “The absence of empathy and/or concern for others.” Asked about the psychological work he undertook in prison, Nordahl Lelandais answers in the first person: “It’s to find out who I was and who I want to become.” He faces life imprisonment.