Fourth day of trial at the Haute-Vienne Assizes. Two men aged 28 and 31 have been on trial since Monday. They are accused of double murder and three attempted murders on June 16, 2021 in Nexon. A day during which one of the co-defendants, the mother’s ex-partner, refused to appear. In a letter read by the president in the morning, he explains that he is not psychologically ready to hear what is being accused of him, that he will never ask for forgiveness because what he did is unforgivable. After a summons sent by the Court and a second refusal by the accused, the proceedings finally continued without him to the great regret of the civil parties and the defense of the co-accused.
“He stole our day. He had to hear what we said to him”Pierrick’s father concluded between sobs. He’s not the only one frustrated. “I am outraged and angry” Jessica says at the helm. On Tuesday, like the other civil parties, she saw the terrible photos of tortured and charred bodies of his sister and his young neighbor, whose mother moved the entire Court this Thursday.
After reading a letter written by her daughter, who is now the same age as her brother at the time of his death, Hélène Berthier recounts the indelible pain of having lost your son au “big heart always kind and generous”. “Losing a child means locking yourself in your room because there is their smell and refusing to open the door so that this perfume goes away”explains the one who thought about suicide. This courageous mother wished the worst to the accused before the start of the trial but changed her mind when looking at the only one present this Thursday in the box: “I’ll leave you to face your own demons. I no longer want to have you in my head. Anger and hatred are not me, they are not values that I learned from Pierrick.”
“Important to testify for my mother”
On the stand this Thursday, Célia’s three children. The tallest, Maëlle gets up. Dressed in a black track jacket that was much too large for her, the young girl with long hair, now 16 years old, had nothing to say at first. But, taken into confidence by the president, she ends up confiding first about her life with her father, then her aunt Jessica, since the death of her mother. Her desire to become a lawyer “defend those who deserve it”. Questioned about the relationship between the absent accused and her mother, she said she saw bruises on her mother’s arms a few weeks before her death, one Wednesday in the kitchen he had also threatened her if she did not come back with her. His mother had changed the locks the day before the tragedy.
Aged 13 at the time of the events, Maëlle takes great care of her little brother Saïmon and her little sister Maïlanne. She is a bit of a second mother to them. From that night of June 15 to 16, 2021, she remembers Pierrick’s moans, going down to ask for a Doliprane because she was in pain and the main accused ordering her to go back to her room. She will try to go downstairs several times, and will arrive in the kitchen once the two accused have left. This is where she sees the two bodies. Then, “I have a black hole”. But she retrieves a handle to open the window of her room, while a fire has been started by the two men.
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All the testimonies from those close to Maëlle speak of a mature and courageous young girl. Since the start of the trial, she has faced the accused. Look at them without looking down. But the teenager is also fragile with a “strong feeling of guilt for not having been able to save his mother” explains his educator. It is also inhabited by a “strong feeling of insecurity and anxiety”. The months of June are very difficult, even more so on Mother’s Day. “Maëlle is very strong, but that hides something. She’s a shell, deep down she’s not good” adds his maternal grandfather, “a shell to protect itself because it is afraid of exploding” adds her aunt Jessica.
Children still traumatized
At the sight of her brother and sister, Saïmon and Maïlanne, Maëlle cracks a smile. The two children aged 8 and 11 are heard by video in another room of the Court so as not to face the accused. With their stuffed animals, they have difficulty answering the president’s questions, consulting together before responding. “When my house burned down I was 5 years old. We were in Maëlle’s room and we shouted so that the neighbors could hear us” says the youngest.
Both also stay traumatized by what they experienced explains their lawyer Me Nathalie Préguimbeau: “They were happy because we took into consideration what they might have to say, at the same time talking about the facts was unbearable for them.” Very quickly Maïlanne, then her brother go under the table, “They were clinging to the legal assistance dog. In particular Maïlanne, she was lying against him and clinging on like a lifebuoy”.
The two children are no longer in the same foster family, so that each has their own space, but both see their big sister once a month. They are in a form of resilience says the educator who follows them, they project themselves and Saïmon talks about “my home”.
