Overcome stress thanks to an animal and promote the confidences that go back up to thirty years back: this experience is based on a practice from the United States and Canada and already tested in the Lot.
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Faced with an extraordinary case of alleged serial rapist, dating back over a period of more than thirty years, the Lyon justice has decided to set up an unprecedented system of assistance to victims, while postponing the limits of the Criminal prescription. From Wednesday, June 22, fourteen of the thirty-three victims of this file are heard in turn in the office of the investigating judge Nicolas Chareyre, in the presence of a dog of legal assistance. The presence of the animal aims to reassure, appease and promote dialogue with the magistrate, according to a still experimental process. The series of hearings, carried out for three days, should make it possible to assess the interest of this canine assistance in the legal proceedings, with a view to generalizing it in France.
The presence of a dog in assistance to victims began in the United States, where two hundred and fifty dogs, specially trained, are currently used in judicial services. The idea arrived in France, in 2019, when an officer of the Cynophile Center of the Grammat gendarmerie, in the Lot, informed the public prosecutor of Cahors of this current process in the United States and Canada. Immediately convinced, Frédéric Almendros then went to Seattle, discovers all the interest of the method and decides to launch an experiment in Cahors, by mobilizing the France Victims 46 and Handi’chiens associations, the firefighters and patrons, to recruit , train and host a dog, all for a budget of 27,000 euros.
In 2021, twenty-eight people, aged 3 to 90, benefited from the presence of LOL, the first judicial assistance dog formed in France, for “very impressive results”, according to Mustapha Yassfy, president of France Victims 46. “The animal can be requested at all stages of the procedure, before the investigators, the judges, even in audiences. Children managed to overcome their blockage thanks to the presence of the dog, simply by caressing it. The dog captures stress, it returns a feeling of serenity. After certain very painful auditions, we organize for him rest courses, and even osteopathy care to preserve it, “explains the lawyer. In Lyon, the general prosecutor Fabienne Klein-Donati promotes this innovative method with magistrates, and judge Nicolas Chareyre seizes it, anxious to pay the greatest attention to the victims, in a particularly delicate instruction.
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