More than three years after the death of the 13-year-old middle school student, four teenagers have been found guilty by the Paris Court of Appeal. This is the first conviction for the offense of school harassment, created in 2022.
It’s the end of a long judicial journey for Lucas’s family. Since the suicide of the 13-year-old student, on January 7, 2023 in the Vosges, his mother has fought to have the school harassment the adolescent endured recognized. In fine, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted four students on this ground, in a decision handed down on June 10 but only now made public. This is the first time a conviction has been pronounced for school harassment, this specific offense having been created in 2022.
The Paris Court of Appeal’s ruling replaces a previous decision, issued in 2023 by the Court of Appeal of Nancy, which had acquitted the four students convicted in the first instance. The decision did acknowledge the “odious” nature of the insults suffered by the young Lucas, but concluded to their “absence of demonstrated effect (…) on the mental health of Lucas”, the boy having not left an explanation for his act. The public prosecutor’s office and Lucas’s mother had then appealed to the Court of Cassation, which annulled the first appellate decision in October 2025.
Homophobic school harassment
While it has not yet been proven that the harassment caused the suicide of the middle schooler, the Paris Court of Appeal held “a degradation of his living conditions” as well as the homophobic nature of the harassment, already found by an administrative inquiry of the National Education system. The insults were clearly aimed, the judges note in turn, “to stigmatize Lucas because of his sexual orientation, which he embraced and which was known to all”. The four adolescents found guilty, aged 13 or younger at the time of the events, will now have to return before the juvenile court in Épinal, which will determine their sanctions.
“Lucas’s mother is deeply relieved by this decision that does justice to her son”, reacts the family’s lawyer, Ms. Catherine Faivre, to têtu. “I hope that justice will determine that the harassment indeed occurred, as the administrative inquiry indicates. We are not here to point fingers at the harassers but to educate them”, the person involved told us in 2024 when her book in homage to her son was published. She now intends to continue her fight by doing prevention work in schools through her association Lunah, founded with her lawyer. And she stresses: “The back-to-school context reminds us that the fight against school harassment must remain a major concern.”
