In addition to the suspended prison sentence, the public prosecutor requested a fine “proportionate to the defendant’s income”: 10,000 euros to underline the “financial weight” suffered by the victims in a case where “money was a central element mechanisms of domination.
The star of the small screen has been appearing since Thursday morning for “habitual physical and/or psychological violence by a partner” between 2018 and 2022 against a former partner, Amandine, as well as for “habitual psychological violence by a partner” against another, Paola, between 2021 and 2022.
The fifty-year-old, dressed in a midnight blue suit and a white T-shirt, denied it outright throughout the day.
Amandine’s crooked fingers, in spring 2022?
“I can’t control my strength because I’m dyspraxic and clumsy […] and I don’t see that she is in pain”, insists the accused, also denying having strangled her. “There is a force which should not have been, it’s an unfortunate incident”, he defends himself.
Amandine also described a stay in Morocco, where Stéphane Plaza, her companion and employer, allegedly humiliated her with a Moroccan personality by telling her: “I brought you a woman, I’m not kidding, take her, It’s your gift.”
A “joke” sweeps Mr. Plaza into the stand. “With hindsight and mentalities that have changed, maybe I wouldn’t do it again.” “I didn’t put her down, I took her everywhere!”, he continues. “For me, woman is the most beautiful thing.”
“He fluctuated: he took care of me, but that could change in 48 hours and everything fell apart,” Amandine testified on the stand, upset.
– Why not stop this relationship? It lasted five years, asked the president.
– I was in love, I worked for him, we lived in his apartment. And there were better times. So I had a hard time getting out of all that.
“We are not saying that there was violence every day,” notes the prosecutor, but that he “established a continuum of violence”. And among these women grows “the fear of bad days, the fear of crises, of denigration and for some, of beatings”.
-Paola once recorded the denigrating comments she denounces. “I wanted to make his loved ones listen to him. It wasn’t normal, the way he spoke to me.”
“It was a game between us!”, retorts the defendant, “a bad Vaudeville”.
The discomfort described by Paola is such that she is going to have an operation to enlarge her breasts and hope to please him more.
“I didn’t understand that she wasn’t doing well,” says Stéphane Plaza, presenting her as crooked, “a princess” who would lie: “She says we see each other four times a week, but I couldn’t no, it’s mathematical, I have six relationships at the same time.”
During the investigation, the two complainants were recognized as having total incapacity for work (ITT) of more than eight days for this recurring violence.
On the stand, four acquaintances of Mr. Plaza, cited by the defense, described a “generous”, “calm” man.
One of them has been in a relationship with him since 2018. “I know he is unfaithful, it can be the subject of an argument but then he is very slippery. It’s me who degenerates”. He is “tender”.
The affair began in September 2023, with the publication by Mediapart of the testimonies of three former partners. The prosecution then opened an investigation.
For his part, Mr. Plaza is trying to have harassment and cyberharassment against him recognized in court. So far, in vain: his first complaint was dismissed on January 7.
Initially a real estate agent, Stéphane Plaza became a star of the small screen when M6 propelled him in 2006 to the head of the shows “Research apartment or house” and “Maison à vente” (2007). At this stage, M6 has ruled out ending their collaboration.
