More than 500 people took part in a white march in Épinal in eastern France on Sunday in honor of Lucas, a 13-year-old teenager who was harassed for his alleged homosexuality and whose suicide in early January sparked great emotion.
The teenager’s mother, Séverine, 35, led the procession, which set off under gray skies in the early afternoon. The ceremony lasted about an hour and ended with a minute’s silence.
“Thank you everyone for coming. I don’t know what to tell you,” Séverine said at the end of the demonstration. Deeply touched, she burst into tears as she spoke her son’s name.
According to Luca’s mother, it was the bullying that was the “trigger” for her son’s suicide. “I’m sorry” that I “couldn’t (…) save (Lucas). Nobody could,” said Séverine, very touched, during a press conference on Monday.
Lucas wrote “a word in his diary that explains his desire to end his life,” Epinal prosecutor Frédéric Nahon said.
The teenager’s suicide had caused great emotions and triggered many reactions on social networks.
Four college students identified by investigators, who are 13 like Lucas, will be tried in the spring on charges of “suicidal school harassment,” prosecutors Nahon said in late January.
He had also launched a “side investigation into X for failure to report abuse of minors”.
The penalties in such a case are usually 10 years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros, but the four authors benefit from the “minority pardon”: the penalties are halved, explained Me Catherine Faivre, Lucas’ mother’s lawyer.