Does one become "the lawyer of desperate fathers" by accident ?
Mister Franck MEJEAN was born in 1952 at Perpignan.
Graduate of the Faculty of Law at Montpellier (34). Soon after his Taking of the Oath in 1979, he engages himself in the defense of the infants of divorce.
As an active member of many associations, Franck MEJEAN often has to expose his views facing professionals in the french media.
At the present time, he is an honorary committee member of the asociation "SOS PAPA" with Annie DUPERREY, Evelyne SULLEROT, Claude SARRAUTE, Aldo NAOURI etcetera ...
Apart from this activity, which dominates his life, Franck MEJEAN also occupies himself with business law, seeing his university degree.
Birth of a calling
Does one become "the lawyer of desperate fathers" by accident ?
Can one imagine to dedicate all of one's time and energy to seemingly lost causes without faith ?
Of course not !
One needs to have a solid trust in justice and humanity to plunge head over heels in those causes as I believe to have done.
Of course, certain encounters reenforce that conviction, certain affairs impress the mind for evermore and give birth to a vocation.
Such is the story of Dr. Jamet, a man in his thirties who, after having battled for over five years to obtain custody of his four daughters, found no other issue to make himself heard in the beginning of the eighties, than to put his life into danger.
At the end of a hunger strike of more than one week on the parvis of the law courts and seven years of legal proceedings and wasted lifes, a Court of Appeal in the south of France pronounced in 1982, one of the first decisions of alternate custody in France, by imposing on both parents a shared responsibility and even the obligation to reside within the frontiers of the same department.
It was to be the first, but also the last of such decisions !
As a matter of fact, shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court of Appeal stated in a judgement rendered on May the 2nd 1984, that alternated custody is against the law.
But a simple semantic study would have lead to the conclusion that the Supreme Court was mistaken : The ancient legal dispositions foresaw with regard to the interest of the child that the judge gave custody to one or the other of both parents.
The conjunction "or" allows the alternation but not the connection and, all the more curiously, that same Supreme Court of Appeal recognised the joint custody - which is in fact a connected custody - but not the alternate custody.
For financial reasons, Dr. Jamet was not represented before the Supreme Court of Appeal and its reply, which is a judgement in principle, is a judgement by default, which is all the same extraordinary ! what followed was even more extraordinary.
As I kept a special relationship with Julien Jamet, I happened to meet him three years ago. He was accompanied by his third daughter. And this is what she told me : during those seven years of judicial battle and social enquiries, two of the three elder daughters were raped by their stepfather, the new companion of their mother. And we obtained custody of the girls just when the youngest one was most in danger.
As it so often happens, nobody had noticed anything, just because the girls had reacted like all the little rape victims : they had never told anything.
Denounced and accused years later, the stepfather denies everything, and only admits a "willing relationship" with the eldest daughter, which was all the same a forbidden act, seeing that the prescription in matters of child rape is ten years after the age of majority.
But in the beginning of 2000, the Assize Court condemns the man to six years emprisonment.
And do you think that the prejudice, which is among the most serious in criminal matters, was compensated for ?
We asked for 400 000 francs of damages and we obtained only 60 000 francs.
Who is being turned into a fool ?
I will send that cheque with pleasure to the President of the Assize Court.
The horror of that affair, whose details largely pass beyond the imagination, definitely convinced me of the cogency of my struggle.
Even if I have to be tactless or outrageous.
No matter what price has to be paid.
I hereby thank my children whom I haven't seen much during all those years, for their understanding and their encouragement.