« We are reassured by this decision, I know, it’s sad to say that, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, confides the 45-year-old mother, her eyes still misty. Now, we will be able to rebuild ourselves.” It is almost 7 p.m. this Friday, June 28, and the Charente-Maritime Assize Court has just delivered its verdict.
The man who nearly took their lives that day in March 2021 has just been sentenced to thirty years of criminal imprisonment, ten years more than what the attorney general had requested a little earlier. The court ruled that “the exceptional gravity of these two crimes, the particular determination” of the accused justified a harsher sentence.
For me there were no warning signs
Since the day before, Thursday June 27, the Charente-Maritime Assize Court, meeting in Saintes, judges this 58-year-old Poitevin, who arrived on the Royan coast in July 2020. On March 17, 2021, “to punish” his wife who wanted to divorce, he attempted to murder, armed with a knife, their 12-year-old daughter in the parking lot of the Maine Gaudin equestrian center, in Saint-Palais-sur-Mer. He was also charged with attempted murder of his ex-wife. If he has always recognized his desire to end his daughter’s life, he has contested from the first day any desire to kill his then partner. But the court did not see it that way.
Obsessive neurosis
This Friday allowed us to return to this terrible act, with the words of the accused. On Sunday March 14, 2021, mother and daughter permanently left the family home in Vaux-sur-Mer to move in with a colleague of the forty-year-old. Four days earlier, the young woman had expressed her desire to divorce. “I found our relationship suitable,” he confides. For me, there were no warning signs. » So his two pillars, the job – which he was losing – then his family, to whom he was entirely dedicated, collapsed in quick succession.
This translates into rigidity, very functional thinking with always the feeling that the other is going outside the box.
The psychologist believes that the accused suffers from obsessive neurosis. “This translates into rigidity, very functional thinking with always the feeling that the other is outside the box,” she explains. That would explain why the mother was not allowed to eat breakfast in her pajamas, she had to be dressed. “This pathology also results in self-punishment, the person deprives themselves of pleasure,” she adds. Except that the latter suffered terribly from the rigidity of the head of the family, who was never aware of it. Hence this shock for him, which led him to embark on this disastrous enterprise.
“Very thoughtful action”
On the morning of Wednesday March 17, 2021, he first decided to commit suicide: “And then, I changed my mind, I made the decision to kill my daughter, then to end my life. » So that his wife suffers as much as he suffers, he will explain. President Wastl-Deligne points out “the enormous disproportion” between the separation and the desire to kill his daughter. The fifty-year-old repeats his inability to explain his actions with a meticulous plan prepared in advance: scouting at the equestrian center, purchasing knives, renting a car so as not to be identified. “A very thoughtful action,” underlines the magistrate.
Between his decision and the attack, there were many opportunities to come to his senses, but he still explains it by the anger inside him, which “had not subsided”. Then comes the sensitive moment of the day, with the story of the attack on his child. “She’s your daughter and you don’t stop?” asks the president. The fifty-year-old cannot explain it: “I made a crazy gesture that I sincerely regret,” he admits in tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
” It’s too late “
For his plea, Mr.e Chaleix, who is defending the 15-year-old girl, had taken out his calculator: “They’ve been living with this for 1,199 days! It haunts them day and night!” Frédéric Ebel, the attorney general, who had requested twenty years of criminal imprisonment, also pointed out the rigidity of the fifty-year-old: “He was ready to kill his child. Who could have that idea? It makes you shudder.”
Me Lochet, who defends the accused with Me Sevet wanted to show the court “that a monstrous act is not necessarily committed by a monster.” She then insisted on “the emotional overflow” that affected her client, preventing him “from stopping the act.” The mother of the family of course heard the apologies that her ex-husband made to her and her daughter, but the damage was already done: “It’s too late,” she told us after the verdict.
