LThe fright can take on the features of a little young girl, quite round, with a braid planted high on her head and gold glasses. A young girl of 19, who blinks a lot and who gives a terrifying story in a voice that is a little high-pitched, a little diligent, fast and at times almost cheerful: the polite voice of a student who is quick to respond to his teacher. Ambre, Amandine’s sister, a year older, arrives on the stand on Wednesday – and we feel, from the first moments, that she does not understand, or barely, what she is there to do. What she experienced. What she witnessed.
Every evening from 6 p.m.
Receive the information analyzed and deciphered by the Point editorial staff.
Merci !
Your registration has been taken into account with the email address:
To discover all our other newsletters, go here: MyAccount
By registering, you accept the general conditions of use and our confidentiality policy.
His story of the day of August 6, 2020, for example, reported in one go: “At the beginning, I got up, I had to go see my ex-boyfriend. Coming down I see my mother panicked, I ask her what’s happening, she tells me Amandine is very bad. Jean-Michel helps Amandine to go upstairs, she had a t-shirt on at that time, I remember it because it was me who undressed her: my mother asked me to wash her while She was going to get the car to take him to the hospital. So I took off the top, I washed Amandine in the shower. There I said to myself It’s hot, she’s very skinny. She was talking to me, but I didn’t understand what she was saying. Afterwards I put her in my bed, I dressed her. There she frothed at the mouth and I said Pope, mountain. So Jean-Michel got in, he put her in the side safety position, well I don’t remember much more clearly what he did. He said to call for help. I said Forget it, she’s dead. Her eyes were completely black, completely empty. »
“She was naked all the time”
Ambre adds in the same tone that she was “very sad”. She had not “really seen” her sister’s condition deteriorate. “Often I was outside. We didn’t see my little sister often, honestly, we saw her very rarely.” She remembers that “at the beginning” Amandine slept with her, in the bedroom on the second floor, and that she wore a t-shirt and shorts. “Afterward, since there were a lot of thefts from the snack cupboard, she was naked all the time” – and we then learn that Amandine, before being too weak to get up, was forced to walk around the house naked.
During confinement, says Ambre, “it was okay”, because Jean-Michel C. was present. It happened that he told Amandine to take a can of celery to go eat “downstairs”: in this storage room, images of which were projected in front of the court on Wednesday. A camp bed, a ladder, some furniture, scattered objects, a roll of floor covering on which Amandine had to stand for hours. And then a surveillance camera, which filmed her continuously.
“- Do you go see her, sometimes?, asks Ambre the president.
– Yes, when mom is not there. Above all, when mom wasn’t there, I had to watch her.
So she doesn’t steal food, we understand. So that she fills her notebooks with “lines”. Ambre would sometimes help her: “because sometimes mom would say If you make 25 pages, you can eat tonight ».
“Not everyone worked in the gas chambers”
“- When did you see her naked?, continues the president.
– I don’t remember exactly.
– But anyway, how come no one remembers that?
– I made a black-out afterward, it’s complicated.
– I understand that it is not easy, but all the same, there are ways of collaborating. Not everyone worked in the gas chambers. So you don’t see her losing weight?
– It’s hard to see what she is like: as we see her all the time, it’s complicated to know. »
-It is surprising, and annoying, to see a president of the assize court lose his cool. It is more surprising, and even more annoying, to see him manhandling a civil party – from a stronger when it comes to a very young girl who has only ever known violence. Eric Emmanuelidis’s rage over this case has often boiled over since the hearing opened. To Ambre, he blames these hearings where, in front of the investigators, she continues to denigrate her sister. “I was hoping my mother would get out of prison,” she tries to explain. “But, in four lines, you put hypocritethree times, viciousthree times. You didn’t have to say that. ” Later :
“- Today you are a civil party. What is your prejudice? What are you suffering from?
– Beatings from my mother, for having less confidence in me.
– But compared to Amandine? »
“It’s sad to say, but I still love him”
Then Ambre begins to cry and it takes all the delicacy of the assessors, then that of the lawyers of both parties, for her to find her place: that of a victim. Who says of his mother, in another sob: “It’s sad, but I still love her. » Who adds that she adopted her version of the facts “so as not to disappoint her”. Who recognizes that, in recent times, Amandine “no longer really existed” for her: “We were living our lives, and she was down there. » She did not imagine that the treatment inflicted on her could kill her: “For me,” she said, speaking of her mother and her stepfather, “it really wasn’t their fault.”
ALSO READ Death of Amandine: the confessions of Sandrine P. faced with an unbearable recordingThis is what we must admit here – or, at least, agree to consider: a system where barbarism had become “normal”, and where no one questioned it anymore. “Normal” is also Ethan’s word, who arrives after Ambre at the helm. He was the little brother, the best loved of all: hit too, on occasion, but only “two or three times a month”, much less than the others.
“ – For me it was normal to get hit. I loved my mother very much, but for me it was normal.
– Were you afraid?
– Oui.
– Was it normal for you to hit Amandine?
– Oui. »
After his sister died, he said, his mother seemed “relieved.” The family returned to their usual life. He wondered “who would be next”.
“We can hope that she had no perception of pain
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
The lawyer who came to testify on Wednesday evening admitted to having never seen, in his 40 years of career, such a file. The heart rhythm disorder which caused the death could, he said, have been caused by an inappropriate, too rapid renutrition effort: when he autopsied the body, the sugar level was “not lowered”. Sandrine P. and Jean-Michel C. talked about compote, a protein drink. In the state in which Amandine found herself, the doctor explains, any food absorbed too quickly could cause a fatal metabolic dysfunction.
Just the day before, he adds, there would have been a one in two chance of saving Amandine if she had been hospitalized. No doubt her state of consciousness had been very altered for several days: “We can hope that she had no perception of pain at the time of death. » On her small body, in addition to the traces of blows and bedsores, the expert discovered numerous scratching lesions, which led him to conclude that there was a lack of hygiene. The child, on the other hand, had surprisingly clean nails.
