Police want DNA from 527 in school rape case

French police demanded that male students and staff at a school in western France — 527 people in total — give DNA samples as they searched for the assailant who raped a teenage girl.

The DNA dragnet started in La Rochelle, and prosecutor Isabelle Pagenelle said so far no one had refused.

She had warned that anyone who decided not to give a DNA sample would be considered a suspect and could be taken into custody.

The testing of male students, faculty and staff at Fenelon-Notre Dame high school is expected to last through to tomorrow. Pagenelle said investigators had exhausted all other leads in the September 30 rape of the girl in a dark bathroom at the school.

“The choice is simple for me,” she said. “Either I file it away and wait for a match in what could be several years, or I go looking for the match myself.”

Police recovered genetic material from the girl’s clothing but had no matches to it in the country’s DNA database. France has an extensive DNA database, with a total of 2 million profiles on file as of 2012 — about 3% of the population.

“This happened during the school day in a confined space,” Chantal Devaux, the private Roman Catholic school’s director, told French media.

“The decision to take such a large sample was made because it was the only way to advance the investigation.”

“Forty samples will be taken per hour, under the watch of teachers when it comes to pupils, as photos and identity cards are not always trustworthy for minors.”

On the delay in conducting the tests and informing pupils, she said: “We first needed to be sure about the girl’s credibility, then look for DNA traces on clothes, check these didn’t belong to relations and compare them with the national genetic print database.”

Summonses went out last week to 475 teenage students, 31 teachers and 21 others — either staff or males who were on campus at the time. Pagenelle’s office, which required parental permission for minors, says it will discard any DNA results from people who were eliminated as suspects.

Devaux acknowledged that all the results could still come back negative, sending investigators back to the drawing board.

“We think there is a strong probability that it’s someone from inside, or at least someone who knows the building very well,” Pagenelle said. The cost to analyse the samples is estimated to total €5,000.

Mass testing of this kind is rare even if DNA-checking has become far more widely used since it emerged in the late 1990s that police might have been able to nab serial rapist and killer Guy Georges earlier had they matched a DNA sample he had given before several further killings.

There has been some criticism of the testing of students.

“I understand the argument that those who have done nothing wrong have no reason to refuse. But why should refusal be considered an admission of guilt?” said Pierre Tartakowsky, president of the French Human Rights League. He said this was “disproportionate, threatening and traumatising”, in an interview with Le Parisien.