A 61-year-old man is on trial in France starting this Friday for having raped and sexually assaulted 56 victims between the ages of 13 and 48 between 1988 and 2018.
Dino Scala, 61, appears in a court in northern France for 17 rapes, 12 attempted rapes, and 27 assaults and attempted sexual assaults. The accused has assumed a part of these crimes.
Scala was nicknamed the “rapist of the Sambre”, because a large part of the crimes imputed to him were committed near the course of this river, which runs through France and Belgium.
This former worker and soccer coach pleaded guilty to “the vast majority of the facts,” said his lawyer, Margaux Mathieu.
The case was opened in 1996, following the complaint of a 28-year-old woman raped by a man in the town of Maubeuge. The assailant’s sperm was found at the scene of the assault.
Since then, complaints began to accumulate from women who reported having been attacked at dawn, in winter and generally on public roads. The victims recounted that the assailant threatened them with a knife and tied them up.
The investigation reached a deadlock and the case was reopened after a series of attacks in 2006 in Belgium, without the culprit being identified either.
But in 2018, a teenage girl was attacked in Erquelinnes, Belgium, and a surveillance camera filmed a vehicle in the area. The driver, Dino Scala, a father of five, was arrested weeks later in northern France.
During subsequent searches, a knife, ropes and gloves were confiscated. His DNA was present in several of the places where the crimes were committed.
Scala confessed to being the author of about 40 attacks and argued that he suffered from uncontrollable “impulses”.
The investigation concluded that he is a sexual “predator”, who enjoyed “dominating” and whose life was “organized” around the crimes he committed.
