Photo: Tarzan, Alexandre Blanchon/Tonga Terre d'Accueil
The Bourgoin-Jallieu and Bobigny magistrates’ courts have (finally) processed the files that we submitted in 2021... We are calling for an exemplary sanction for the trafficking led by the Gougeons, particularly at the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe, but also at the Cirque de Paris (where we got Jon, Patty, Marli, Céleste, and Hannah seized from), Cirque Idéal, and Italiano, where the family of circus trainers runs riot.
We have clearly established that the animals were kept illegally by various members of the family. Here, it was Joseph and Stéphane Gougeon, but also Guy Mordon, an uncle, implicated in the case (repeatedly postponed and then dealt with in Bourgoin-Jallieu), in which breeding was happening, and where a lion ended up in a shop selling ‘stuffed’ animals from all over Paris, a very lucrative trade.
Our lawyers collected and displayed our evidence obtained during an investigation that started in 2018 on a platter. However, the legal system decided otherwise. They did not take essential information into account. A missed opportunity.
Tarzan, a lion placed to hide others
Several lions were kept without a certificate of competency and had supposedly been placed in the Mordon Circus which also did not hold any authorisation; the identification of Jon, a skeletal and mutilated lion already saved and placed into a shelter by our team months before, was listed under Tarzan in the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe’s animal logbook... Under pressure from our relentless work, Tarzan was moved to the same place as Jon at Tonga Terre d’Accueil.
From all of this, in its 20 February 2023 decision, the Bourgoin-Jallieu tribunal only retained the fact that Tarzan was kept illegally. Only Stéphane Gougeon was convicted for non-authorised keeping of a non-domestic animal species with a four-month suspended prison sentence and damages to be paid. Nothing was held against Joseph Gougeon. As for Guy Mordon, he was released.
A case within a case: at twenty thousand euros for a lion skin... just a slap on the wrist
Finally, we found the unlicensed taxidermist who was working on behalf of the reseller to whom Joseph Gougeon took a lion carcass in 2019; we led an investigation and filed a complaint. The defendant was heard on Monday 20 February by the legal system. He admitted that he was guilty (a hearing with an appearance on prior admission of guilt). But the Bobigny Tribunal decided to close the file without even hearing our arguments.
We respect these decisions at the same time that we deplore them. A sign of the times: the rule of law, worn down, must make choices that are to the detriment of the voices we speak up for. However, nothing will stop us letting our fellow citizens, whatever their place in society may be, know what these animals in our country endure. We have not finished with our fight to defend them against exploitation, training, and being kept in captivity in circuses.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice
Comments 11
Jane Marshall | Friday 10 March 2023
Shogun 74 | Monday 27 February 2023
Patricia | Friday 24 February 2023
trochu | Thursday 23 February 2023
Shogun74 | Monday 27 February 2023