Nouveau Cirque Triomphe’s sleight of hand tricks partly condemned by the legal system
Stéphane Gougeon, a trainer from the Nouveau Cirque Triomphe, convicted in the case of Tarzan the lion; the taxidermist’s case has been closed without any further action.
In these cases with labyrinthine family ramifications, the circus performers have deployed all of their talents as smooth-talkers. And if the scheming of the Gougeons has allowed them to fall back on their feet a hundred times, this time they have – partly – failed to slip through the net of justice, thanks to a One Voice investigation of several years. This investigation led us to all of this family’s circuses all over France, and even to the shop of a taxidermist who imports and exports wild animal products, one of the biggest types of trafficking worldwide.
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