The Case of the "Presumed Guru" Robert Lé Dinh

The Case of the “Presumed Guru” Robert Lé Dinh

By CICNS (April 2012)

Read our 2010 article on the same case

The case of the “presumed guru” Robert Lé Dinh, as some media have called him, is instructive as to the treatment of judicial cases concerning “cults” in France.

Background

“For more than twenty years, Robert Le Dinh led a community of some twenty people, first in the Lot-et-Garonne, then in the Ariège, before becoming the subject of a complaint and being placed in police custody on 5 September 2007 and, two days later, being placed under formal investigation and in pre-trial detention. The case had begun in April 2007, when two of his former disciples, a couple of civil servants who had joined the group at its creation in 1984, denounced his doings to the gendarmes of Saint-Girons (Ariège). Born in 1959 at Villeneuve-sur-Lot (Lot-et-Garonne), this son of a Buddhist worker of Vietnamese origin and a French Catholic mother says he received a divine message from Christ in 1982 making him ‘the servant’ or ‘the third messiah’” (NouvelObs).

Following this denunciation, Robert Lé Dinh was accused of “rape”, “sexual assaults, including on minors”, of “mental hypnosis” (NouvelObs), and of “manipulation and mental hold” (La Dépêche). One of the principal complainants, Isabelle Lorenzato (accompanied by her husband), says she was raped for 22 years by Robert Lé Dinh.

The first-instance trial

UNADFI joined the proceedings as a civil party, accompanying several former members of the group to the trial. It is within the framework of the About-Picard law that this association was authorised to join as a civil party; it now does so systematically in every trial where it itself declares the context to be a cult one; it is supported in its action by the MIVILUDES (recall that Catherine Picard, president of UNADFI, sits on the Orientation Council of the MIVILUDES). One of the MIVILUDES’s objectives is to obtain several precedents on the About-Picard law (to date only the Néophare case has allowed an application of this law, just after its vote with great fanfare in 2001), which would allow the fraudulent notion of “mental manipulation” applied to “cults” to be entrenched.

The Robert Lé Dinh case was thus immediately placed in a context of anti-cult psychosis. It was no longer a “judicial case” but indeed the trial of the imaginary contemporary social scourge invented by the French public authorities (see our history of the French anti-cult struggle). This subterfuge was energetically condemned by Robert Lé Dinh’s lawyers (see our commentary on the first-instance trial).

At first instance Robert Lé Dinh was sentenced to “15 years’ imprisonment for rape, sexual assault on minors and abuse of weakness”.

The appeal trial

Twelve years’ criminal imprisonment were requested by the advocate general, Cécile Deprade, who had sought between 10 and 12 years’ imprisonment at first instance. “She thus went beyond her first-instance submissions even though she asked for the aggravating factor in the prosecution to be abandoned. She stressed that she was not coming to plead ‘against a cult’, a ‘philosophy’ or ‘a belief’, in keeping with the ‘two founding principles of freedom of conscience and religious freedom’, but against ‘a man’. The advocate general said she was ‘convinced that Robert Lé Dinh committed the crimes and offences for which he appears’ and that he ‘subjugated his victims by psychological subjection’.” (NouvelObs)

The advocate general’s assertion that she was not coming to plead against a “cult” must be seriously questioned. Can she be unaware of the impact on the proceedings of the presence of UNADFI at the trial (with the implicit endorsement of the MIVILUDES), an association whose declared objective is the struggle against cults and which is recognised as being of public utility? Can she brush aside the remarks of Maître Martial, Robert Lé Dinh’s lawyer, on the tenor of the exchanges: “We are wary of the devastating idea of the cult and of cult hold, which is a stock-in-trade” (NouvelObs)? Can she be unaware that the notion of “psychological subjection”, which she endorses, is the legal translation of the concept of “mental manipulation” introduced into the About-Picard law specifically designed against movements labelled cults (cf. the title of the law)? Is Cécile Deprade not resorting to a classic artifice: claiming not to do what she is ostensibly doing but ought not to do? If the judges of the bench have steadfastly refused (except in the Néophare case) to use the notion of “psychological subjection” (inapplicable because undefined, and discriminatory since in practice reserved for groups labelled “cults”) what can it be that drives the magistrates of the prosecution to invoke it so often in the corresponding judicial cases? Why do the former show a lucidity the latter struggle to demonstrate, when they attended the same School? Must the non-independence of the prosecution service be invoked once again?

The assize court of the Haute-Garonne finally sentenced Robert Lé Dinh to ten years’ imprisonment for “aggravated sexual assaults”. It “to the disappointment of the civil parties, set aside the aggravated rapes and the aggravated abuses of weakness” (Romandie).

“On the side of Robert Lé Dinh’s lawyers, the dominant feeling is one of ‘duty accomplished’. ‘The cult is today abandoned; it does not exist. Nothing remains of the idea of the cult, whether as to mental manipulation to obtain sexual favours or the same mental manipulation to obtain money,’ declared Me Martial, for whom this case is ‘no longer that of the guru but that of the illusion of the cult’” (La Dépêche).

The media

If, from the beginning of the case, some media remained cautious about the various parties’ versions (for example Sud-Ouest), the treatment of the information rapidly deteriorated in the direction of a crude anti-cult vision.

We denounced in particular the indecency of France 2 and LCP, which gave the Lorenzato couple a platform without any adversarial voice and without any critical spirit, between the first-instance trial and the appeal trial, in programmes targeting “cults”. Isabelle Lorenzato, after being taken in hand by UNADFI (might we say “manipulated”?), played her role of “lecturer of anti-cultism”, in an expression of Maître Martial, Robert Lé Dinh’s lawyer (Romandie). Media acting in this way become disguised civil parties; that is not their role, especially in the case of public channels, to say nothing of the way this type of programme degrades journalistic ethical principles. Moreover, the accusations of rape invoked by Isabelle Lorenzato were not upheld by the Court of Appeal. If, “despite her ‘terrible disappointment’ at not having been recognised as a victim, Isabelle Lorenzato said she was ‘relieved’ that the ‘children have been protected by justice’ and that Robert Lé Dinh ‘got ten years’, during which ‘he will do no more harm’” (La Dépêche), she principally spoke of her personal case, and of the rape she says she suffered, during her appearances on France 2 and LCP. This attitude, understandable given her feeling of being a victim, should nevertheless give pause to the media that invited her, as to the partiality of their programmes. But do they even want that? Are they even conscious of it?

The unreflecting adherence of certain journalists to anti-cult rhetoric can also be seen in certain turns of phrase. The NouvelObs speaks of the “presumed guru, tried on appeal for rape”. The “presumption of guilt” now attaches to the term “guru”, pejorative, which becomes in itself a carrier of criminality. After the verdict of the appeal trial, which set aside the notion of the “cult”, the “presumed guru” becomes once more “Robert Lé Dinh sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for aggravated sexual assaults” (NouvelObs).

Our assessment

The Lé Dinh case allows us to arrive at a finding that ought to be superfluous. “Cult” cases do not exist. There exist only particular cases of abuse. And it is the role of justice to treat them within the framework of the ordinary law.

The public authorities, through the intermediary of the MIVILUDES and the anti-cult associations, instrumentalise the fear of cults and attempt to install a propaganda and a justice dedicated to targeting these groups, while claiming the contrary; the attitude of denial of the advocate general in the Lé Dinh case reflects the posture of the executive and of Parliament on the subject.

Unsurprisingly, the anti-cult protagonists think they hold a truth inaccessible to ordinary mortals. Following the decision of the Court of Appeal, Maître Picotin explains “the difficulty for the legal world, the criminal-law world and for the general public of understanding mental manipulation, a cunning, second-degree criminality” (La Dépêche). No doubt the world was waiting for Maître Picotin, Georges Fenech, Catherine Picard and a few obscure psychologists, “experts in dérives sectaires”, to understand the human psyche. Maître Picotin moreover expects “the Chancellery to lodge an appeal in cassation so that a new trial may take place”, for Robert Lé Dinh “is a total guru. As an expert demonstrated at the Toulouse trial, we are well and truly in the realm of mental manipulation” (La Dépêche). We disqualify the notion of the “total guru”; as for that of the “total anti-cultist”, it deserves reflection in view of this type of declaration.

Despite this climate of “influence”, the judges and the popular jury were able to evacuate the notions of “cult” and “mental manipulation” at the appeal trial. That point is remarkable, and allows one to hope that France will manage to rid itself of anti-cult hysteria.