The 18-year-old suspect in custody for the barbaric rape of a 29-year-old woman in the French port city of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin already had a rap sheet consisting of 17 offenses involving violence, theft, and the incestuous sexual assault of his younger sister.
Oumar Ndiaye was arrested by French authorities on Aug. 10 for an attack that has rocked the nation and prompted several interventions from high-ranking politicians.
Dubbed “the monster of Cherbourg” by French conservative activist Damien Rieu, Nidaye allegedly broke into his victim’s home before subjecting the young woman to multiple counts of rape, which included the use of a 29-inch broomstick to penetrate her and inflict life-threatening injuries.
The attack left the woman with a perforated colon, small intestine, and diaphragm, rib fractures, and at a high risk of septic shock. She was hospitalized and placed into an artificial coma where she remains in critical condition.
Emergency responders who attended the scene have been offered psychological care and support following the attack with many staff members breaking down in tears at the condition of the victim, France Bleu reported.
“Investigators are shocked, they have never seen so much barbarity,” one source familiar with the case told the publication.
Ndiaye was arrested six days after the attack when fingerprint evidence from the scene matched the suspect’s DNA already registered on the police database. This was further corroborated by the geolocation of Ndiaye’s mobile phone which was in the vicinity at the time of the attack. He was subsequently indicted for “rape accompanied by torture or acts of barbarism” the following day.
The suspect “initially denied the facts before finally acknowledging them when he was confronted with the result of the discovery of his fingerprint,” Le Figaro reported, although he showed no remorse.
“We are on a dangerous profile, he showed absolutely no emotion and no empathy for the victim. He showed coldness throughout police custody,” a source close to the investigation told the newspaper which later reported that Ndiaye has 17 entries on his criminal file, citing a police source.
One of the offenses pertains to the sexual assault of his 12-year-old sister last year for which he was summoned to attend a psychiatric unit but did not show up.
“A procedure for the rape of a minor initiated in 2019 was dismissed by the prosecution in 2020, on the grounds that the offense was not sufficiently characterized. And a sexual assault procedure against his sister is currently under investigation, without it being possible at this stage to determine whether or not these facts have been established,” read a statement from the local public prosecutor’s office published on Monday.
Several high-profile politicians across France have expressed their anger over the attack with conservative lawmakers warning that such crime is on the rise in the country.
“Courage to the 29-year-old victim, the umpteenth life shattered by the barbarism that is gaining in France,” tweeted Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally.
“I dream of a France where a young woman is not in danger of ending up in a coma after being robbed, raped and horribly tortured by Oumar, a repeat offender, in her own home,” added former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.
Zemmour’s remarks were seized upon by left-wing Olivier Faure, the secretary general of the Socialist Party, who insisted that the right-wing politician was being racist by suggesting that it is immigrants who are rapists. He added that it did not matter whether the perpetrator’s name was “Oumar, Francis, Michel, Emile, Guy, or Patrice,” and that it was a heinous act nonetheless.
