The Paris prosecutor’s office on Thursday requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 10,000 euros against the famous real estate agent Stéphane Plaza, tried before the criminal court for domestic violence against two former partners.
The Paris prosecutor’s office on Thursday requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 10,000 euros against the famous real estate agent Stéphane Plaza, tried before the criminal court for domestic violence against two former partners. “Stéphane Plaza is accused of having struck blows, denigrated, publicly humiliated, twisted his fingers so hard that some were dislocated, of having bitten,” listed the prosecutor in requesting this sentence.
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“We must remember today who is the victim and who is the aggressor, not to make the couple a lawless zone. Stéphane Plaza made a choice: that of violence to impose his will within the couple” , she said. 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.
“To convict someone, you need tangible evidence”
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. Both were recognized as having total incapacity for work (ITT) of more than eight days.
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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 do not control my strength because I am dyspraxic and clumsy (…) and I do not see that she is in pain,” insists the defendant, also denying having strangled her. “There is a force that should not have been there, it’s an unfortunate incident,” he defends himself.
The keys to Paola’s apartment, which he doesn’t give back to her despite her requests? “A stupid thing, he lost them,” assures his lawyer, Carlo Alberto Brusa. “We are making something monstrous out of a few small facts. And without proof. To convict someone, you need tangible proof,” he argued.
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“Continuum of violence”
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 Stéphane Plaza at the helm. “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.
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– 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”.
“A bad Vaudeville”
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.”
On the stand, four acquaintances of Stéphane 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, Stéphane 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. At the end of the trial, Stéphane Plaza said he wanted to “resume his life”. “I am truly innocent.” The judgment will be delivered on February 18.
