The defence team for C.V., a former nurse at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) crèche, requested acquittal on Wednesday before the Brussels Criminal Court on charges of aggravated rape and sexual assault with the same aggravating circumstances.
The former nurse at the ULB crèche and her partner at the time are both being prosecuted for the rape of a child under the age of three, sexual abuse of three children under the age of three, and the production, distribution, possession and acquisition of images of sexual assaults on minors.
The Public Prosecutor's Office is seeking 16 years' imprisonment for him and 10 years' imprisonment for her, as well as referral to the sentencing court.
Trial continues
Olivia Venet, one of the defendant's three lawyers, argued that there was insufficient evidence in the case file to support a conviction for the former ULB creche nurse.
"I sympathise with the doubts, anxieties and everything else that this case may have caused the parents of the children at the nursery," the criminal lawyer said at the outset. "But we are in a court of law that has rules, including the rule of burden of proof."
"The evidence is not sufficient to say that there was penetration," Olivia Venet argued.
Five photos of the private parts of unidentified babies, all dated between 2020 and 2022, were found on the defendant's phone, Olivia Venet pointed out.
These photos "do not correspond to the allegations of sexual assault," the lawyer continued. According to the metadata, only one photo was subsequently sent via Telegram messaging, and the lawyer argued on Wednesday that it was not a photo of sexual assault.
'False confessions'
The absence of other photos in the file should also be taken into account by the court as "negative evidence", argued the nursery nurse's lawyer. "It is said that she deleted photos, but there is no digital trace of these photos."
Although the defendant stated that she filmed some of the children at the nursery, these statements are part of the "false confessions" she allegedly made to the police during a particular hearing, her lawyers said.
The information given to the police during the investigation "says everything and the opposite" and therefore does not contribute to the truth in this case, according to the defendant's defence.
The police report minutes, from 28 February 2025, illustrate the "bias in the police's perception", the criminal lawyer continued.
An important piece of evidence in the case, these minutes, written by investigators three days after the parents of the children involved in the case were notified of the judicial investigation, state that "the investigation reveals that the two defendants abused children in a nursery".
Illustration shows the campus of ULB. Credit: Belga
The three lawyers representing the creche nurse devoted a third of their closing arguments on Wednesday to the factual existence of false confessions in the history of the justice system.
They called on the French-speaking Court of First Instance in Brussels to judge the former nurse as a person with intellectual disabilities, a profile that is statistically over-represented in cases of false confessions.
The only "true confessions" made by the defendant were those made spontaneously at the beginning of the investigation, insisted Olivia Venet, when C.V. replied that she "never touched a child".
"She says over and over again that nothing happened, but no one ever believes her. We only believe her when she says that something happened," the lawyer continued.
The lawyers asked the criminal court to "keep an open mind" and to be attentive to the personality of the defendant, who "combines risk factors" in the production of false confessions.
They described the former nursery nurse's life story, punctuated by violence and abuse committed by her former partner and co-defendant in this trial, A.E.
To supplement the request for acquittal, C.V.'s defence team pleaded with the judges on Wednesday for a probationary suspension of the sentence or a probationary reprieve.
When did it happen?
According to the public prosecutor's office, the offences were committed on several occasions between June 2020 and September 2022, and took place at and within the nursery where the nursery nurse sometimes worked alone in the section.
The public prosecutor has extended the period of the offence relating to images of sexual assaults on minors, stretching it to the arrest of the two defendants in February 2025.
After hearing the civil parties and C.V.'s defence at the hearing on Tuesday and Wednesday, the court will hear A.E.'s defence on 17 March at 9 a.m.
