The Lé Dinh Case: Remarkable Defence Pleadings on the Relentless Mechanics of So-Called "Cult" Trials
CICNS
The Lé Dinh Case: Remarkable Defence Pleadings on the Relentless Mechanics of So-Called “Cult” Trials
By CICNS (September 2010)
Read our 2012 article on the same case
It took the jurors of the assize court of the Ariège no more than three hours, on 18 September 2010, to sentence “the guru” Robert Lé Dinh to fifteen years’ imprisonment (beyond the submissions of the advocate general, who had suggested a sentence of “ten to twelve years”).
The accusations were heavy. What are the facts? According to several witnesses of the trial, the defendant is not very convincing. He seems to have the typical profile of the “cult guru” and even arouses a kind of automatic repulsion from the first days of media coverage of his case. Yet one cannot say that the evidence was legion. It consisted above all of emotional outpourings and of “intimate conviction” (the advocate general declares that “the will of the victims was annihilated”. On what basis, the debate on mental manipulation, a pseudo-scientific concept, never having been settled?), elements that sit poorly together when one genuinely seeks justice. Everything suggests that this 51-year-old man sexually abused his disciples. Already convicted in 1984 for extortion of funds, he is this time accused of having abused adult women and underage girls. Which he denies. Even at the end of the trial, everyone is still there. Doubt remains possible. The conclusions are given by the intimate conviction of the jurors.
But beyond this shaky trial, the eloquent pleadings of the two defence lawyers deserve attention, so readily could they be applied in a general way to all trials of the same kind, and to the anti-cult debate in general. Let them speak:
Maître Lebonjour, of the Toulouse bar: “There has been much talk of a cult in this trial. Beware of not mixing up facts and beliefs … When morality enters a courtroom, it is the justice of the ayatollahs that enters … You are here to judge what Robert Lé Dinh did or did not do! (…) Here, there are no material facts, no technical elements; everything is words, and they are highly contradictory! (…) There is a problem with the credibility of the so-called ‘neutral’ witnesses … Everything is supposed to be Robert Lé Dinh’s fault… I do not believe it. No one was despoiled … He enriched himself, he profited — but so did the others!”
Maître Martial, of the Agen bar:
“I am angry and I am afraid, because the cult is being posited as a postulate. You have been mired in the discourse of the dérive sectaire … Before being the victim of a cult, one is the victim of oneself. Will I have strength enough to pull you out of this spider’s web?” He goes so far as to point at the principal accuser, Isabelle Lorenzato, with these words: “She is taking the whole world for fools!” He does not believe that she could have been “raped for twenty-two years, without ever reacting, without a minimum of free will remaining to her to say NO! (…) What is extraordinary is that, as soon as Madame Lorenzato speaks, whatever she says, she is believed, because there is this postulate of the cult … She is believed when she says she suffered molestation at the hands of her grandfather, without proof; she is believed when she says she was raped a first time, at sixteen, coming home from a club, without proof; she is believed when she says she suffered abuse, without a medical certificate in support; she is believed when she poses as a victim of Lé Dinh … Mental hold is a decoy! (…) When she speaks, at the stand, tears in her eyes, sobs in her voice … articulating with difficulty … Do you believe it? I do not! … You have been mired in anti-cultism … Madame Lorenzato has been living in a lie for twenty-two years … and when she steps out of it, she is believed the very second she expresses herself … She has completely instrumentalised her husband! The truth is that Mr and Mrs Lorenzato held important, decisive, indispensable positions in the organisation of the group — he as ‘steward’, she as ‘favourite’. When the group moved to the Ariège, they lost that strategic position, and they cannot bear it! Only one step remains for her to take. That the jury say to Robert Lé Dinh: ‘You raped Isabelle Lorenzato for 22 years!’ If you say that, you restore to her a moral virginity she lost twenty-two years ago. You will be the launderers of twenty-two years of lies!”
Despite the great pertinence of these lawyers’ remarks (who underlined how decisive the French anti-cult climate was in the decisions of our justice system), the jurors remained intractable and came down in favour of a severe sentence: “15 years’ imprisonment for rape, sexual assault on minors and abuse of weakness”. The convicted man decided to appeal, but the doubt hanging over the real relations between Robert Lé Dinh and several women of his group will persist, as is generally the case in many affairs where the emotional prevails over the justice of evidence, without anyone finding much to say against it. Of this verdict Lé Dinh says: “I will go, but it will not be the truth that has prevailed. It will perhaps be ten years of suffering, but I am not afraid of it. I will continue to give battle.”
CICNS takes note of this first-instance decision of justice, and salutes the courage of the isolated lawyers who manage to make a rational note heard in such a climate of passion.
Sources: ariegenews lefigaro
Sources
- Affaire Lé Dinh : remarquables plaidoiries des avocats sur la mécanique implacable des procès dits de « sectes » (archived copy of http://www.cicns.net/Le_Dinh.htm)
English translation of Affaire Lé Dinh : remarquables plaidoiries des avocats sur la mécanique implacable des procès dits de « sectes » (French), originally by CICNS.