The Affair of the Ardennes Social Intervention Directorate (DISA)

The Affair of the Ardennes Social Intervention Directorate (DISA)

By the CICNS (October 2010)

January 1996: Publication of the report on cults.

February 1996: “Mme Danielle Villière, secretary of the Union santé CGT, denounces orally to Yves Pardonnet, director general of the departmental services, and Didier Hamel, director of the Ardennes social interventions (DISA), the “cult” membership of certain educational staff within the Ardennes child welfare service.” (Source)

16 December 1996: “Mme Danielle Villière renews her denunciation, this time in writing, to the President of the General Council of the Ardennes, M. Roger Aubry, in these terms: “It is destructive that educational staff in thrall to a cult should be in contact with children entrusted to you by the judge, when those children are already in a situation of danger at home and prove to be fragile, vulnerable, in great suffering”.

“Even if the facts mentioned concern us, proof must nonetheless be brought that personal convictions affect professional activity. In the absence of tangible evidence, I can only urge you to the greatest prudence” , Roger Aubry had replied.

“Until the day when the change of public prosecutor and of director of health and social affairs accelerated the investigation”, the newspaper continues. (Source)

2003 : “A public health inspecting doctor gathered two rumours which claimed, on the one hand that several educators of the Ardennes child welfare service belonged to a Japanese cult, and on the other that numerous malfunctions were to be noted in the service. Which this doctor of course attributed to “a system arising from cult practices”. When they reached his ears, eager for that type of information, the Charleville-Mézières prosecutor Francis Nachbar issued a blank cheque to the Reims judicial police.” (Source)

May 2003: Opening “of a shaky case file, opened in May 2003 by Francis Nachbar, former prosecutor of Charleville” concerning a “cult” involvement in the Ardennes child welfare services. (Source)

January 2004: Publication of the 2003 report of the MIVILUDES, which announces the affair to come, in these terms: “Certain movements of a cult character seek to exert their influence on very young children. Thus the activities of the Sukyo Mahikari movement were observed in 2003 in a child welfare service to which a children’s judge had entrusted children for placement or for follow-up action:

- educators and foster families undoing family ties or preventing them from being renewed, with the aim of maintaining the placement of the children in foster families- parents discredited by grave accusations of ill-treatment or by the delivery of false information to the children placed or followed. - refusal of access to psychotherapy care in a medico-social facility, or to other care (dermatology, spectacles, orthopaedic shoes), interruption of health provision with the aim of isolating the child and - or its family.

The courts have been seised of the facts concerning vulnerable adults and children. An administrative inspection has also been ordered.” (MIVILUDES, 2003 report, Chapter 5, “The health of minors”, p. 80) End of March 2004: “A report of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) on the operating anomalies of the Ardennes child welfare service (ASE) is on the minister’s desk”. “Marie-Josée Roig, who succeeded Jean-François Mattéi at the head of the Ministry of the Family, is alone empowered to make public a report that is for the moment confidential. (…) Alerted by the DDASS, the prefect requested an inspection by the Igas. Arriving in October at Charleville-Mézières, four inspectors tracked for four months the malfunctions of the services and the presumed influence of a cult. “On the sensitive subject of the existence of cult behaviour, the mission did not bring to light any abnormal behaviour, but notes that the operating arrangements of the ASE service cover that risk poorly”, the inspectors conclude.”

“A female educator is accused of having deliberately removed children from their lawful parents. It is one of the cornerstones of the SRPJ’s investigation. At the same time, the Igas reveals acts of ill-treatment, negligence in the management of the compensation of child victims, an opacity in the monitoring of minors. To the point that the report was transmitted to the courts.”

“Whereas the principle is, so far as possible, never to break blood ties, certain officers appeared to have the opposite professional practices. More than fifty families are said to have testified to that effect.” (l’Union, 17 April 2004) April 2004: On Tuesday 6 April, a specialised educator in post at Charleville-Mézières since the 1980s is “apprehended by police officers of the Reims SRPJ, then held for 48 hours in police custody”. On Thursday 8 April she is imprisoned and will remain so for three months: “At the end of her questioning, this mother, a member of the cult of Japanese origin Mahikari, was placed under investigation for abuse of weakness against minors, deprivation of care, moral violence and non-presentation of children. Despite the support of her hierarchy, she was then imprisoned at the remand prison of Châlons-en-Champagne. If the facts are established, she faces five years in prison and a fine of 750,000 euros.” (l’Union, 10 April 2004)

This educator recounts “the way in which the prosecutor [Francis Nachbar] intervened, during her police custody, pointing his finger at her to scream at her with his eyes out of their sockets: “Confess, one can quite see that you belong to a cult, it shows in your eyes…” (Source)

“Two other educators, a man and a woman, were placed under investigation and put under judicial supervision with a prohibition on practising their profession.” (l’Union, 10 April 2004) The case is entrusted to an investigating judge. May 2004: “Since the imprisonment of an educator of the Ardennes child welfare service, families in difficulty, deprived of their children for years, are breaking their silence and lodging complaints. (…) Each week brings its crop of revelations and complaints. (…) A hundred or so families complain of the doings of the social services in the Charleville-Nord sector.” (l’Union, 7 May 2004)

4 September 2009: Scoop: “On 25 June, in the office of a judge at Charleville-Mézières: pushed to their last defences at the end of an interminable confrontation of nearly eight hours, two officers of the prestigious SRPJ (regional judicial police service) admitted having invented the confessions of persons under investigation whom they were charged with questioning. (…) These forgeries had dramatic consequences. In no particular order, one may cite the shattered lives of the three educators, the disappointed hopes of the families manipulated into lodging complaints in order to try to shore up an empty file, or again the noxious atmosphere that reigned among the colleagues of the three unfortunates. For in the wake of it, the Disa was for four months the object of a thorough investigation by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs. The latter would even try to establish, in vain, that a network of misappropriation of funds was then rife within the service, whose managers had supposedly dipped freely into the fund intended to compensate the children entrusted to them.

In short, for months, the whole small world of Ardennes social assistance lived to the rhythm of accusations all the more unbearable for being unjustified.

It remains to be known whether the two judicial police officers who committed this act acted on their own initiative, in order to “show off” on a highly publicised case, or whether they were more or less under orders (see opposite), with an obligation to produce results…” (Source)

(…) In April 2004, under pressure from a prosecutor hungry for media recognition, two SRPJ investigators (a service nonetheless regarded as bringing together the elite of police officials) had dressed up to their own taste the statements of the persons they were questioning. So as to make them fit the framework previously fixed by the prosecutor. The point at the time was to sink three educators of the Disa, the departmental child welfare service, suspected of cult behaviour. Body search, humiliation, threats…: nothing had been spared the three suspects during the 48 hours of their interminable police custody. But to no purpose. Left high and dry, the Reims super-cops had then doctored the confessions they had not managed to wring from their “clients”…

10 July 2010: “More than six years on, the courts have just handed down a discharge in the affair of the Ardennes Disa: the three educators called into question for alleged cult behaviour had nothing to reproach themselves with.(…) It is a veritable Outreau scandal in the Ardennes style that Anne de Pingon, a young investigating judge at Charleville-Mézières, has just put an end to, by pronouncing a discharge in the Disa affair (Ardennes Social Intervention Directorate). The recall of the facts, even in summary, remains dramatically eloquent. In the spring of 2004, acting on the orders of Francis Nachbar, a public prosecutor thirsting for media recognition, and relying on rumours and gossip peddled by skilful troublemakers, the SRPJ investigators persist in demonstrating that the Disa is infected by a cult. (…) “The educators of the Disa are constantly walking a tightrope, testifies today Didier Hamel, at the time of the facts director of that service. They must (…) work to ensure the conditions permitting the return of the child to its family of origin. We were then among the pioneering departments in that last field, with teams charged with encouraging returns to families. These accusations of cult behaviour annihilated us.”

“Persecuted by the prosecutor and his henchmen, three educators indeed bear the cost of what Didier Hamel considers to be “an attempt at destabilisation with regard to our directorate and the general council as a whole”. A particularly heavy cost… Placed in police custody in scandalous conditions, the three educators, one of whom would be the object of a measure of preventive imprisonment of several months, find themselves lynched in the public square thanks to cleverly organised media leaks. “The aggressiveness shown towards the service was incredible. All the social workers were suspected of the worst. We were taken for gangsters. Besides the police investigation, a team from the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs came to pile it on, itself too convinced before having studied the file that we were guilty. It was a file of hatred. We were swimming in a veritable climate of madness, of witch-hunting.” More than six years after the facts, a judge, at the end of a task as tedious as it was remarkable for courage and clear-sightedness, has therefore just put a final full stop to this affair. At least to its legal aspect, for certain wounds will never be able to heal. Wounded to the quick and for life, the three educators unjustly called into question still today do not have the strength to testify. Too painful… “8 April 2004, the date of their being placed under investigation, will remain for me a cursed date, resumes their former director. These three employees were the victims of more than questionable doings remote-controlled by a manipulator who wanted to settle his scores with the general council. Now, I am looking for the great puppeteer…” (Source)

“Inheriting a shaky case file, opened in May 2003 by Francis Nachbar, former prosecutor of Charleville, Anne de Pingon had but one alternative: to make facts that did not exist fit, or to take up the procedure again and verify each of its assertions. She chose the more honourable option. Thus she interviewed the superiors and colleagues of the accused educators, the parents of the children who had been entrusted to them; more than 125 people in total who had nothing to reproach the accused with. The investigation even made it possible “to assemble a great majority of exculpatory elements”, writes Mme de Pingon in her order. (…) While it rehabilitates the victims of this “mini-Outreau”, the discharge damns the police methods. The magistrate confronted the CID investigators with the educators, and she confirms, with a circular in support of her demonstration, that it was pointless to strip the women in police custody (the brassiere of the oldest, 51 at the time, was confiscated during the detention).” Concerning the “confessions”, the investigating judge describes in the discharge order: ""It is remarkable that the terms used (by the isolated suspects) should be the same”, she notes, insisting on “the extreme similarity of the statements”. She is astonished that most of the questions do not appear in the record of the proceedings: “They would have reduced the legibility of the document” , the investigator replies, disregarding article 429 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which obliges him to note them. His colleague ended up acknowledging that “the remarks transcribed had not been said by the educators . (…) The discharge states that “he himself wrote the paragraphs in question”. In conclusion, these “confessions” in reality contain only generalities and rely on no precise fact. Gathered in highly questionable conditions, they cannot constitute an element of proof. No offence having been brought to light, the procedure is void. In any case, it contained a magisterial error: Mme F. was placed under investigation on the basis of facts… time-barred!” (Source)

July 2010: ” On Tuesday, a trial was to pit police officers who considered themselves defamed against two journalists of l’Union/L’Ardennais. Except that between the lodging of the complaint and the hearing, an investigating judge dealt a harsh blow to the procedure conducted by the complainants against three educators… who benefited from a discharge! The police officers’ lawyer having declared himself “tired”, the trial was adjourned to 21 September by the Reims court.” (l’Union, July 2010)

22 September 2010: Testimony of the former public prosecutor of Reims, François Nachbar, at the trial pitting the police officers of the Reims SRPJ against the newspaper l’Union/L’Ardennais: “As regards the Disa affair which he supervised, he is just as categorical: the rules were scrupulously respected. The discharge order of judge Pingon is, in his eyes, riddled with “untruths” and “false things”: “To my mind, this order is not objective and is not reliable.” The prosecution service did not appeal, however… In any case, he vouches for the investigators: “I am responsible for the base things written about the police officers since I exercised a rigorous control over their work. The abuses alleged, the shouting, the extorted confessions, the psychological torture, it is all false! To send innocent people to the stake in order to show off, it is senseless! (…) Judge Pingon would therefore have gone astray, moved by who knows what design that would see her attack police methods without foundation. M. Nachbar ventures an explanation that nobody had asked him for: “She has only three years’ experience, it is her first post. I make no reproach to her…” (Source)

9 October 2010: “To mention only the two most resounding judicial fiascos of Francis Nachbar, who had an interest in “gunning down” Pascal Urano or, through the Disa, the general council of the Ardennes?” (Source)

15 October 2010: “The chairman of the newspaper L’Union, Jacques Tillier, called into question, in an open letter addressed to Brice Hortefeux, police officers of the Reims SRPJ and a public prosecutor for “flagrant malfunctions” during an investigation of 2004 concerning three educators, since cleared.” Extract from that letter : “If we published these articles and used a particularly accusatory tone, it is because we were and are more than ever convinced today of the perversion of the institution by those very people who are supposed to serve it. Put otherwise, we did our job, quite simply.” (Source)

20 October 2010: Convicted, l’Union and L’Ardennais appeal: “Jacques Tillier, chairman of l’union/L’Ardennais, together with the journalists Christian Chardon and Jean-Claude Roussel, were convicted yesterday afternoon in the defamation trial brought by the police officers of the Reims SRPJ (our editions of 22 and 23 September last).

The president of the Reims criminal court, Odile Madrolle, and her two assessors found them guilty of the acts charged, pronouncing a fine of 6,000 euros against Jacques Tillier and of 3,000 euros for each of the journalists.” (Source)

23 October 2010: According to Jacques Tillier: “Brussels, seat of the European Court of Human Rights - which recognises the press’s role as watchdog -, is not far away and we still have so much to do, to write, to recount, to reveal…” (Source)