On the occasion of the international day against violence against women, Monday November 25, Isabelle Fouillot, the mother of Alexia Daval killed by her husband seven years ago, confided to ELLE: “Every year, figures of feminicides parade: 100, 120, 140 women killed… We forget their first names, we no longer know who is who. » And to call for telling the broken destinies of these women killed every year because they are companions, mothers, daughters. ELLE offers you the story of ten of them, ten symbols which, beyond the tragedies, demonstrate the diversity of feminicides and stories which cannot be summed up in numbers.
Corinne Bray's home turned into a crime scene on the evening of Monday April 8. This 60-year-old woman was found dead in the building she lived in, in Lectoure, a small town of 3,600 inhabitants located in Gers. According to the investigation, the victim was attacked around 9 p.m. She barely had time to call the police before losing her life.
What are the circumstances of this femicide?
On their arrival, the firefighters and police discovered a body mutilated with several wounds, probably due to a bladed weapon. Corinne Bray's face was swollen and her body was marked by three blows to the heart, elements confirmed by the Agen public prosecutor's office. “It is a priori a death which was caused by stabbings”, subsequently clarified the public prosecutor of Auch, Clémence Meyer.
It's too late to save her. At his side, his 37-year-old son was found by the gendarmes in a state of “agitation”, according to the daily “La Dépêche du Midi”. He is so disturbed that the police have to come to blows to control him. Arrested, he was briefly taken to Auch hospital. The next day, Tuesday April 9, he was placed in police custody for homicide of his ascendant. Police custody is extended. He does not dispute the facts and claims to have acted in “a fit of anger”. He “deeply regrets his action,” said his lawyer, Sandra Vasquez.
Find the stories of these symbolic feminicides:
According to “La Dépêche du Midi”, the thirty-year-old has a past as a drug user. The magazine “New Detective” presents him as a child beaten by his father in his youth. He “smokes cannabis” and “drinks a lot”. A carpenter by training, he found himself unemployed following leukemia, a precarious situation forcing him to live with his mother with whom the relationship had always been conflictual.
Who was Corinne Bray?
Corinne Bray, a trained caregiver, worked in the Paris suburbs before moving to the countryside. Passionate about dogs, for several years she had been renting an old farmhouse in a small place called “La Couture”, along the RN21, a little away from the other houses. There she ran “Des bergers aux loups”, a dog breeder in which she raised Czech wolfdogs and Cotons de Tulear, a breed of small dogs with white fur. On her Facebook account, she also posted photographs of dogs. We see her with long brown hair, light bangs partially covering her forehead.
Corinne was the mother of five children, three boys born to a first husband, including the alleged murderer, then two to her second partner. The suspect was placed in pre-trial detention at Mont-de-Marsan prison in Landes. He faces life imprisonment. The family home was searched the day after the incident, as was the car parked in front of the old farmhouse. The dogs from the breeder were taken care of by the local SPA. During Corinne Bray's funeral, a donation box was made available for the Gers SPA, testifying to her love for animals.
Why is this femicide symbolic?
Corinne Bray would have been killed by her son, making this femicide a probable matricide: killed because she was a woman and a mother. There would have been 14 in 2024 (out of the 122 feminicides recorded by the Féminicides association by companions or ex). In 12 cases, the alleged murderer is the son of the victim (case of Corinne Bray), in two cases, it is the stepson and in one case, it is a daughter who allegedly killed her mother.
In cases where the murder is the work of the son, it is common for the son to be interned in a psychiatric hospital (half of the cases in 2024). Corinne Bray's son does not seem concerned at this stage of the investigation. During his hearing and his presentation to the liberty and detention judge, he did not have a psychiatric history. Matricide remains in 2024 a phenomenon little documented in the scientific literature. The few studies that exist date back several years and often approach the phenomenon through the psychotic prism of the murderer, making this type of feminicide opaque and relatively unknown.
