En 2020, in full confinement, the Arcachon bailiff and his employee did not expect to meet in a supermarket in the city. He comes to make an observation. She goes shopping with her boyfriend, a skipper in Arcachon. This episode is at the heart of the complaint for moral harassment filed by the young woman two years later. She assures that her boss had forbidden her this sentimental relationship and that, since he had unmasked her in this supermarket, the ministerial officer had made her go through hell within the study.
It will take three hours at the Bordeaux criminal court, this Thursday, December 19, to try to decipher the relationships between this senior bailiff who arrived from Béthune in 2018, his young partner, and their 28-year-old employee. The bailiff is accused of having harassed the young woman by interfering in her private life, imposing too heavy a workload on her and subjecting her to authoritarian management.
“It got out of hand”
“I don’t disagree that she had a heavy workload. But it was poorly organized. And she never complained,” recounts the bailiff at the bar. To establish its religion, the court has kilometers of WhatsApp exchanges between the three court officers. In front of the judges, each party intends to benefit from these conversations which happily mix professional and personal lives.
Has the mentoring exercised by the bailiff gone too far? “I wasn’t used to this kind of communication when we set up WhatsApp. Very quickly, things got out of hand, I’m not very proud of what was said,” concedes the defendant, who claims to have tried to reframe things. The exchanges evoke, pell-mell, the life of the study, the current files, but also private outings, advice on the young woman’s sentimental life.
Some suggest discrepancies. Like this message from the associate to his boss: “Stop targeting her, she didn’t do anything, it’s you who’s losing her temper.” » Or a collection of messages in which the young woman made a point of working on certain Saturdays and Sundays. “I was stupid enough to accept everything. When I started to say no, they made me go through hell,” explains the complainant.
“Why, very frequently, are you the one sending messages and initiating conversations outside of work hours? » asks Me Arnaud Dupin, the bailiff’s lawyer. “They were the ones who explained to me that if I wanted to become an associate, I needed relationships of trust. They criticized me for not confiding enough,” relates the young woman. “I confided in this man whom I considered a mentor. »
“I was stupid enough to accept everything. When I started saying no, they made me go through hell”
Within the study, the secretary recounted in the minutes the reprimands that the boss could inflict. Arcachon representatives also confirm the young woman’s apparent state of fatigue. He admits to having lost his temper only once.
But within the office where he officiated in Béthune, the judicial officer did not leave only good memories. “Your former associate testified that you called her a bitch, a bitch, a blonde. She said that there was constant pressure, that you were yelling that you were calling her incompetent in front of clients,” explains assessor Denis Roucou. “I lost my temper one day. I was being kicked out of my own study,” the bailiff defends.
Ten months suspended sentence required
“We continued to persist, we maneuvered to prevent me from settling down. In this profession, qualified bailiffs are dedicated body and soul to installed bailiffs who have the right of life or death over us,” proclaims the young woman. The civil party accuses her boss of having subtly used the mechanisms of the profession by requesting the opinion of a commission composed of a general lawyer and bailiffs when she had initiated a procedure to purchase a study. This commission decided in favor of dismissal before one of its members transmitted the file to the president of the Regional Chamber of Bailiffs, who in turn launched a disciplinary procedure. The sanction imposed will ultimately be overturned by the court of appeal. “She was the victim of harassment which has its roots in the most vile mechanisms of the little boss,” chokes Me Jean Gonthier, the employee’s lawyer.
Prosecutor Nathalie Quéran is demanding a ten-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 15,000 euros, recalling that the young woman was prescribed one month of ITT.
“She was the victim of harassment which has its roots in the most vile mechanisms of the little boss”
“We trashed this file,” says Me Arnaud Dupin. Before proceeding with a methodical counter-reading of the messages. “Every time she worked on Sunday, he blamed her for it. » “We cannot complain about the intimacy that we ourselves have created,” continues the lawyer, listing the flattering messages sent by the complainant to her boss. “She played her move perfectly, but she is looking for money in this story” thinks Me Benoît Ducos Ader who pleads for release.
Decision on February 20.
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