Five months after the release of Behind the Trees (Flammarion) by Frédéric Pommier (journalist at France Inter) where he describes a rape suffered at the age of 7, the Radio France investigation unit reveals two new testimonies implicating Joaquim Pueyo. Patrick B., aged 59, claims to have been sexually abused in the Alençon region by the former socialist mayor when he was a minor. Tony C., aged 47, accuses the former deputy of sexual touching by surprise when he was 15 years old, during a family visit to the Nanterre prison of which Joaquim Pueyo was the director. The two men are determined to file a complaint for sexual assault of a minor.
In the spring of 1981, Patrick B. was 14 years old. Orphaned, placed successively in several families and foster homes across the Normandy region, the teenager was then one of the residents of a home south of Alençon (Orne). It is precisely near this center for children in difficulty that Patrick remembers being picked up, at the end of the day, by a man in his thirties in a beautiful car, with a light brown interior. "I regularly went to the wall to join my friends in Arçonnay. I didn't want to stay at the shelter, Patrick remembers. I hitchhiked because I didn't have a moped. Near the shelter and a gas station, I saw a gentleman who stopped next to me and asked me where I was going. I explained to him and he offered me a ride."
“He’s nice, small. He speaks well. I don’t have any particular suspicions.”
Patrick, who filed a complaint against Joaquim Pueyo
Radio France investigation unit
Arriving in Arçonnay, the man finally offers to invite him to eat in an American restaurant and then to go to the cinema in the town of Le Mans, several tens of kilometers away. Patrick accepts what appears to him to be an outburst of generosity. "I couldn't afford things like that. Did he do that to make me let my guard down? I don't know." Patrick does not remember any inappropriate behavior towards him, either in the restaurant or during the cinema session. But according to him, things will then take another turn. On the road back to Alençon, when it is already dark, the adult suggests to him that it is already too late to return home and offers to accommodate him at his home, in a hamlet, on the outskirts of the city. Here again, the teenager does not perceive any danger and accepts the proposal.
He kept telling me: “Shh!”
In this isolated house where the teenager is invited to sleep upstairs, Patrick says he is joined during the night by this adult who, according to his testimony, tries several times to caress him then forces him to masturbate. "He forced me to caresses. I pushed him away several times but he came back to me during my sleep. He kept saying to me: 'Shh! Shh! Shh!'. I can still hear that 'Shh!' Today." Patrick remembers being frozen by fear and the impossibility of knowing where exactly he was, or how to escape. "I was stuck in this completely isolated house with this man. I was 14 years old. I didn't know where I could have gone if I could have defended myself and gotten out."
"I panicked. I let him."
Patrick, who filed a complaint against Joaquim Pueyo
Radio France investigation unit
At dawn, the man drops him off by car without a word to Alençon, not far from his home for orphans, leaving Patrick in a state of total astonishment. “It’s a bit of a blackout. I don’t remember the journey. I think I was stunned,” recalls Patrick.
In the months that followed, the teenager physically identified the man who, according to him, had abused him without yet putting a name to his face. He sees her several times in the center of Alençon on weekends, notably in the bar La Renaissance, an establishment closed today. “When he saw me in the distance, he pretended not to see me,” he remembers. During the period of the alleged events targeting Patrick and Frédéric Pommier, Joaquim Pueyo was president of the festival committee of Livaie, a village in Orne where his parents lived and of which he became mayor in 1983. He already worked for the prison administration as prison director. According to our information, he lives in Paris, but returns very regularly, on weekends, to the Alençon region. He lives in a house that he renovated himself in Livaie, near that of his parents.
A face that resurfaces on television
The years pass, Patrick leaves the department. Already weakened by his past as an orphan, he tries to put the sexual assault behind him, but the face of this man resurfaces on television. On TV sets or during broadcasts of debates at the National Assembly, Patrick recognizes Joaquim Pueyo who has since become director of numerous French prisons, mayor of Alençon (from 2008 to 2017 then from 2020 to 2026), general councilor and deputy for Orne. Thus, at the end of 2021, Patrick saw him on television during the hostage-taking of two guards by an inmate in the Condé-sur-Sarthe prison or during urban violence in the Perseigne district, on the outskirts of Alençon. “He was the man who picked me up,” explains Patrick.
“I would have liked to file a complaint, but I feared the impact on my wife. With my background as a foster child, I was afraid that my testimony would be called into question."
Patrick
Radio France investigation unit
“I also understood that he was a powerful man. The fact that he was a prison director played a role. I made films for myself. I told myself that he was going to send me guys to silence me or an army of lawyers." Contacted by the Radio France investigation unit, six people in Patrick B.'s entourage, including his partner, confirm to us that they have been informed over the last ten years of the sexual assault of which he claims to be the victim. Frédéric and Valérie, a couple of friends, say that Patrick confided to them about his trauma when they happened to see Joaquim Pueyo on television in their living room. “He started boiling with rage when he saw the mayor of Alençon on the screen,” remembers Valérie. That's when he needed to tell us what had happened to him. We were stunned. We encouraged him to file a complaint.”
A friend prevents him from approaching the mayor of Alençon in a living room
On September 11, 2022, during the “Dentelle Ink” trade fair dedicated to tattooing in Alençon, a friend prevented Patrick from approaching the mayor of Alençon whom he saw in the aisles. The organizers of the show confirm the presence of Joaquim Pueyo that day. Sébastien, another close friend, remembers that Patrick mentioned with him, more than ten years ago, during a weekend in the mountains, the name of Joaquim Pueyo and this alleged sexual assault. Mathieu was taken into his confidence during a trip to Scotland last March. “It affected my life,” notes Patrick, now a municipal agent close to retirement. I developed a skin disease, psoriasis, a few months after this story, and I still have it [editor's note: he shows us on his arm]. And it's ruining my life. Is it related? When I drink a little, these things come out, but I kept all that inside me for a very long time." Everything changes with the release, on April 15, 2026, of the book by journalist Frédéric Pommier. Informed by relatives, Patrick feels the need to speak out to support the one who dared to break the silence. He decided today to file a complaint in Alençon, even if he knows that the alleged facts are prescribed. "If Frédéric Pommier had not spoken about it, I would not have said anything, admits Patrick. I would have continued to remain silent. But he took this step. I had to support him.”
A second witness mentions similar facts
The testimony of Patrick B. is not isolated. Tony C., aged 47, knows Joaquim Pueyo and his family. Originally from Livaie (Orne), like him, his mother attended the same classrooms as the chosen one. At the time of the accidental death of Tony's father, Joaquim Pueyo was mayor of this village. He helped the widow of this family who then had four boys and two girls. “He was always part of our entourage,” says Tony. “He helped my mother a lot. As a child, I considered him a friend of the family and a politician who had power.”
In the summer of 1994, Joaquim Pueyo was the director of the Nanterre remand center, not far from Paris. According to Tony, he invites the widow and three of her sons to his official accommodation located within the prison grounds. Tony remembers a stay of three or four days intended to discover the capital. He was then 15 years old. According to him, Joaquim Pueyo accompanies the family during a visit to Paris.
More than 30 years after the events, Tony says he has a very clear memory of the sexual abuse he allegedly experienced as a minor in Joaquim Pueyo's apartment in Nanterre prison, while the rest of the family was sleeping. "I remember that that evening, I went to bed alone in a separate room. In the night, I woke up because I felt my private parts being touched. I didn't understand. When you are young, obviously, you don't understand. I turned over on my stomach, in a self-defense movement, to make it stop. It was Joaquim Pueyo who was behind me. I knew him very well. It was him who affected me that night. It didn't go any further. He had to go back to sleep afterwards. The next day, I wanted to move on because there was embarrassment and shame.
“A lot of anger”
“Everything I thought about Joaquim Pueyo has since completely changed,” explains Tony, who says he has harbored “a lot of anger over all these years”. We will have to wait for the release of Frédéric Pommier's book, in April 2026, for him to decide to confide in the mother of his children and one of his older brothers, as the latter confirmed. “I told myself that we had to react, let it come out, because I am not the only one in this situation,” explains Tony, convinced that his testimony will free people to speak. Unfortunately, I think that there are many people who remain silent out of embarrassment or because of the power that Joaquim Pueyo may still have. Tony decided to file a complaint like Patrick.
Questioned by the Radio France investigation unit, the office of the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, told us that "Joaquim Pueyo was not the subject of any disciplinary procedure during his career in the prison administration (1977 to 2008)". Before working for the Ministry of Justice, Joaquim Pueyo was a history and geography teacher and worked in the early childhood sector.
“An unconvincing position of denial”
In April 2026, the Caen prosecutor closed the complaint filed three years earlier by Frédéric Pommier for "rape and sexual assault of a minor" against Joaquim Pueyo. The journalist was aged 7 or 8 at the time of the rape and sexual assault he denounces. “This dismissal is exclusively linked to the statute of limitations of the facts of which you were the victim,” wrote prosecutor Joël Garrigue to the journalist. “It emerges from the investigation that your statements appear perfectly clear and credible.”
Joaquim Pueyo categorically denies any guilt. In an interview with Ouest-France on May 21, 2026, the former mayor of Alençon declared: “I am not the author of this attack. I have never been attracted to children.” He filed a complaint against Frédéric Pommier for “slanderous denunciation”. His lawyer, Maître Jérémy Kalfon, indicates that he does not give "any value" to the new testimonies, believing that "justice is meted out in palaces and not in the media".
