The former director of Sciences Po, who had pleaded for release, received a 5-month suspended prison sentence. The director, who admitted to being slapped, received an 8-month suspended prison sentence.
A romantic relationship “toxic” which ends with a double criminal conviction. This Friday, November 29, Mathias Vicherat, former director of Sciences Po, and Anissa Bonnefont, director, were found guilty of domestic violence by the 10e chamber of the Paris criminal court. They received five and eight months suspended prison sentences respectively.
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“I was punched, kicked, bitten…”: at the trial of Mathias Vicherat and Anissa Bonnefont, the autopsy of a “destructive” relationship
Sad epilogue for an affair which lasted two years. Mathias Vicherat and Anissa Bonnefont became a couple in November 2021. The relationship between the forty-year-old and the thirty-year-old, who nevertheless described themselves at their trial as “very much in love”deteriorates quite quickly. The arguments follow one another, as do the blows. A very painful abortion “abyss” definitely the spouses.
The high point of this union “dysfunctional” is reached on December 3, 2023. That evening, Mathias Vicherat and Anissa Bonnefont, who have not lived together for several weeks, find themselves at Lutetia, a palace in 6e district of the capital. An argument breaks out and degenerates into an altercation, all under the hotel's video surveillance cameras. Shortly before 11 p.m., Anissa Bonnefont walks through the door of the 7 police statione district, followed shortly by Mathias Vicherat.
Slaps, strangulation and broken wrist
At the police station, both are taken into custody. When they come out the next afternoon, the affair is everywhere. At Sciences Po, many voices are being raised to demand the resignation of Mathias Vicherat. The emotion is such that the director withdraws from mid-December to the end of January, before finally resigning in March “in order to preserve the institution”.
Several months later, on October 24, the former spouses found themselves face to face in court. Anissa Bonnefont is accused of violence during the dispute on December 3 at Lutetia as well as various episodes that occurred in 2023. At the hearing, the director “fully assume” of having slapped his ex-companion several times, but denies having punched and kicked him. For his part, Mathias Vicherat does not recognize any of the violence against his ex-partner with which he is accused – strangulation and a broken wrist.
In his requisitions, the prosecutor demands “the same sentence” against the two defendants: six months suspended prison sentence, accompanied by a ban on contact for three years. “I am convinced that in this case, there are two victims who are real victims, but who are also guilty. These are serious acts of violence committed by both parties which require a firm response so that they are not trivialized. insists the representative of the public prosecutor.
The court finally found the two forty-year-olds guilty, but pronounced two separate sentences against them: five months suspended prison sentence for Mathias Vicherat, eight months suspended prison sentence for Annissa Bonnefont. They now have ten days to lodge an appeal.
