A Congolese migrant due to stand trial in France for the double rape of two elderly hospital patients and the rape of a minor two days later has claimed that because he does not have a girlfriend he is “forced” to rape.
Ali Gandega, 28, was arrested in September 2022 after entering the Max-Fourestier Hospital in Nanterre on July 27 and sexually assaulting a 78-year-old patient in bed before fleeing to another ward on the premises and raping a 68-year-old woman suffering from a neurodegenerative disease just minutes later.
Video footage from the hospital showed the abuse suffered by the two elderly victims and DNA evidence taken after his arrest linked him to another rape, this time a 12-year-old girl, that occurred two days later in the same city.
[pp id=48523]
Le Parisien reported how the man had used scaffolding to enter the child’s bedroom window before strangling and molesting her.
At a police interview, Gandega reportedly told officers that he only wanted to “make love” and that he had initially entered the hospital with a view to raping babies, leading to questions about his mental capacity to stand trial.
French media reported how, when Gandega was in police custody, he explained that because he didn’t have a girlfriend, he was “forced” to rape.
“I decided not to ask anymore … and to do what I had to do,” he is cited as saying.
Born in the Republic of Congo, the suspect joined his siblings in France at the age of 18 but soon became addicted to drugs and refused to work, leading to his sisters throwing him out and him becoming homeless.
During his pre-trial detention, Gandega was relocated from a prison to a secure psychiatric facility and has reportedly become a recluse, refusing to leave his prison cell for interrogations.
He did, however, at one point reportedly attempt to rape a fellow patient or inmate.
Despite being diagnosed as psychotic, an expert psychiatric report has recommended that he is fit to stand trial for the crimes, and an indictment order was filed on Jan. 30 for a trial later this year at the Hauts-de-Seine Criminal Court.
Gandega faces up to 20 years in prison for the offenses.
