The Criminal Court in Tournai sentenced a 66-year-old Peruwelz resident to seven years in prison and ordered his immediate arrest. The man was accused of indecent assault and rape involving his two under-age granddaughters. The court cleared him of some of the charges but found the suspect showed a total lack of remorse in spite of prior sentences for indecent behaviour in the 1960s.
The prosecutor requested four to five years’ imprisonment against the Peruwelz resident accused of raping his two granddaughters, aged under 10 at the time, as well as indecent assaults. The man denied the accusations and said he was the victim of plot following a family feud. His counsel asked for his acquittal.
The man’s daughter found her own daughter’s private diary, the contents of which encouraged her tofile a complaint against her father in 2009. She called both her sister, who refused to believe the father had been sexually-abusing his granddaughter, and her brother who also had a daughter around the same age. The brother’s daughter also admitted to her father that her grandfather had abused her when she was a child.
The victims were heard by a child psychologist who determined their accusations sounded true. The suspect’s mental state was also assessed and the expert called him “narcissistic, self-centred, brutal and a macho.” The man had a prior conviction for rape. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by the Assizes Court in Douai (France) in the 60s. But he had had no dealings with the police since.
(Source: Belga)
