2023-11-13 21:30:54
NEWS.
The hunt for Dino Scala, nicknamed the “rapist of the Sambre”, is the subject of a mini-series on France 2. This 62-year-old man was sentenced in July 2022 to 20 years of criminal imprisonment for 54 sexual assaults and rape. This affair occupied several generations of investigators for three decades.
THE CASE.
“The Sambre rapist” (or “morning rapist”, in Belgium) operated between 1988 and 2018 around his home located on the Franco-Belgian border, in the Nord department, near the Sambre river which earned him His nickname. For 30 years, Dino Scala slipped through the cracks. Described as a good family man, even a “ doting father » by his wife or as a “ man with a big heart » by one of his daughters during his trial, the friendly coach and president of the Pont-sur-Sambre football club was in the shadows a sexual aggressor, tracking his prey in France and Belgium on the banks of the Sambre.
How might this sexual predator have gone under the radar for 30 years? During the trial, Franck Martins, one of the investigators who had worked on the case since 1996, gave some explanations. He explained that the rapist’s radius of action extended over 30 kilometers around the Sambre river and that to carry out the investigation, the police had only meager clues reported recurrently by the victims: a strong smell of grease. , a light car, a hat. “ We were looking for an average gentleman », explained the investigator.
The case stalled until one morning in February 2018, when an investigator spotted a car matching the various reports near the scene of the attack on a young girl on the Belgian side. The driver was arrested a few days later at his home: Dino Scala. Soon, the results of the DNA study confirmed the investigators’ suspicions: the maintenance technician and father of five children was indeed the sexual pervert who had been terrorizing the region for 30 years.
Dino Scala was tried in June 2022 for 17 rapes, 12 attempted rapes and 27 assaults or attempted sexual assaults, i.e. 56 acts. He was convicted of 54 of them, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. During the hearings, he explained that he had been experiencing urges since he was 12 years old.
ARCHIVES.
The archive at the top of the article published on June 9, 2022 in the 19-20, Nord-Pas-de-Calais edition, traces the affair in archives and attempts to answer the question: who is hiding behind the rapist of the Sambre? The report broadcast on the eve of the trial included testimonies from victims: “ I think he had spotted me (…) he spotted me walking to work from home », « I said to myself: I have a rapist behind my back… », « With a knife to his throat, he told me to shut up otherwise I’ll kill you!! ».
The modus operandi, the proximity of the places and the multiplication of complaints, everything led us to believe that it was a serial rapist, which had generated a wave of terror in Avesnois, with the establishment of “reinforced security in the morning so that there are no single women as explained by Annick Mattighello, the mayor of Louvroil (2001-2018). On the Belgian side, the same climate of fear and deployment of additional patrols by the mayor of Erquelinnes.
The report then returned to the last attack by the rapist not far from Erquelinnes station, on Monday February 5, 2018. After attempting to rape a 15-year-old girl, the rapist fled by car. His vehicle had been filmed by surveillance cameras, revealing part of the license plate. A few weeks later, at his home in Pont-sur-Sambre, Dino Scala was arrested, quickly admitting the facts. In this montage, Jean-Philippe Vicentini, the public prosecutor of Valenciennes, explained that he had declared that he was acting under impulses that he might not control.
The report also returned to his town where his arrest and his confession created astonishment among the residents. This portrait of an affable and sociable man contrasted with the last testimony presented in the archive, that of one of his victims who was 14 years old at the time of his rape and who described the exchange she had with him so that ‘he doesn’t kill her. The challenge of the trial was to try to unravel the Scala enigma.
1699922418
#Dino #Scala #rapist #Sambre