The family of British schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson, who was raped and murdered in a youth hostel in France, had to relive the agonising last moments of her life today.
But the details of the brutal attack on the shy and studious 13-year old proved too much for her mother Sue and sister Jenny, 20, who had to remove their translation headsets as forensic experts described what happened.
Caroline’s father John, 49, from Bodmin, in Cornwall, sat ashen-faced as he listened to the entire account of how his much-loved daughter was killed on the floor of a shared hostel dormitory in Pleine Fougeres, Brittany, in July 1996.
The Dickinsons had hoped they could begin rebuilding their lives last June after 55-year-old Spanish drifter Francisco Arce Montes was jailed for 30 years for Caroline’s murder at a court in Rennes. But the family have had to make the painful journey to Brittany once more for Montes’s appeal against conviction.
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Under French law, every citizen has the right to appeal, which takes the form of a retrial before a new judge and jury.
Speaking on the second day of the appeal at La Cour d’Assises in St Brieuc, Professor Helene Jouan, from the faculty of medicine in Rennes, said Caroline was raped before she was asphyxiated and died within one or two minutes. She said the attack was “brutal and violent”.
“Obstruction was complete and total in order to complete the asphyxiation,” she said. “If you can get a bit of air in, then asphyxiation is much slower.But if the mouth and nostrils are both covered and there is no possibility to take in air, she will have to fight to get air in.”
She said this was in accordance with written statements from one of the four girls sharing a room with Caroline the night she died.
In written evidence, Ann Jasper said she was woken by noises in the middle of the night and saw Caroline shaking her legs but she thought she was having a nightmare and went back to sleep. Ms Jasper is due to give spoken evidence for the first time in court tomorrow.