A new case of sexual perversion has shaken the conscience of the French. A man known as Romain G., 40 years old, married and father of two children, has been accused of rapes and sexual assaults against 34 children aged between two and nine years old, in a village of 2,000 inhabitants near Lyon, Lucenay, now linked in the sordid French geography with the Mazan of Gisèle Pelicot.
A collection of 127 videos and 197 photos as evidence of his abuses has been recovered by the Police from Romain G.'s laptop, a filmmaker by profession, who had worked as an assistant director on the famous series Kaamelott. The accused used his own children as bait to attract classmates and hold sleepover parties at his own home, where he committed his sexual assaults during the children's bathroom breaks or while they were sleeping in guest beds.
The parents of three children reported him in January 2025, when he was first arrested, and the true extent of his sexual depravity was not yet known. The investigation, revealed last week by Le Monde, has identified up to 34 minors, "although not all have been victims of the same crimes", as specified by the prosecutor Laetitia Francart.
The investigation has indeed classified the crimes into three categories: recorded images, assaults, and rapes. The prosecutor stated that all potentially affected families (at the Robert-Doisneau school and in other surrounding areas) have already been contacted. The investigation will be concluded in the coming weeks, and the affected individuals will be called to an informational session, where the trial date may be announced.
"I am a monster and I must die: I have hurt my family and many people", Romain G. wrote in a letter found in a hotel in Lyon, as a testimony to his struggle against his own demons. During the investigation, the suspect attempted to hang himself from an oak tree in the Charnay forest, but the Police found him alive.
According to a psychiatric report prepared during pretrial detention, Romain G. suffers from a "characteristic paedophilic deviation", manifested by "sexual fantasies with prepubescent children aged three to nine, repeated rape impulses and behaviors with strategies to keep them secret". The report highlights his "criminal dangerousness" as a paedophile, under the guise of a friendly family man.
In his latest police statement, Romain G. has admitted to "the vast majority of the acts" attributed to him and has provided precise details of his actions: "The only barrier I had was not to traumatize them, so they wouldn't see what I was doing. I suffered too much from the consequences [of a rape] myself, and it was important that they didn't realize."
Romain G. claimed to have been a victim of sexual violence inflicted by an older cousin when he was 10 years old. 25 years later, he acted as the godfather of his cousin's abuser's son, who is also among his own victims.
In his statement to the Police, the accused admits to using "chemical submission" on the minors, providing them with sedatives "to keep them unconscious during sexual or digital penetration". However, the most common method was to use tricks like the "taste game," blindfolding the children and asking them to guess what was put in their mouths. As an integral part of his perversion, and in another chilling analogy with the Pelicot case, Romain G. recorded his abuses and stored them on his laptop.
"I don't have the images, and I don't want them," said the mother of one of the children to Le Monde. "I have them in my head, and that's what he achieved: forcing me to imagine a sexual act between an adult and my six-year-old son." The father of another victim resignedly acknowledged, "My son is the weakest link in the family; I would have preferred it to be me."
The father of another victim recalled how Romain G.'s house had become "a kind of amusement park" to attract the children of the village, "with a pool, a cabin, slides, video games, and Christmas lights all over the house." He had direct contact with several children on his mobile phone, exchanging emojis and wishing them "a beautiful childhood."
The news has caused a shock in Lucenay, the peaceful village in the picturesque Beaujolais region half an hour from Lyon, suddenly turned into the media epicenter during the May 1st holiday. "We are all in a state of shock: we all knew them and saw him as a normal man", admitted a mother identified as Sandrine to the TV channel BFM Lyon, mother of an 11-year-old girl. "She never attended his birthday parties or those scoundrel's sleepover parties. What we still don't understand is why it took so long to uncover all of this since the first report."
In the background is the unsettling family history of Romain G., who met his wife Elodie on the set of Kaamelott and whom he once considered as "my jewel." According to Le Monde, Elodie has regretted being for years "under the influence of a manipulative man who has a problem with the female gender and who is taking revenge on me." His relatives have acknowledged that the suspect "treated his daughter particularly badly, compared to his son," but they never saw signs of his level of perversion towards children.
Romain G.'s case has brought to the French's memory a similar scandal, starring his namesake Romain Farina in 2015, the headmaster of a school in Villefontaine (south of Lyon) and accused of dozens of abuse cases and possession of thousands of files with child pornography images. Romain Farina committed suicide in his jail cell on the eve of the trial. Romain G. will possibly face trial sometime this year.