Shock in France: tried for having killed her husband because he mistreated her and prostituted her since childhood

Valérie Bacot was raped as a child by her stepfather, who later became her husband, who in addition to mistreating her forced her into prostitution. Its process begins when a new wave of brutal feminicides challenges the policies against gender-based violence that the government promotes.

On March 13, 2016, Valérie Bacot said enough about the violence, sexual and psychological abuse of which she had been a victim who was first her stepfather then her husband, as well as a pimp and aggressor since she was a child.

That night, at one point on a road in Saône-et-Loire, in central France, after a new threat for not having submitted to the demands of one of the customers with whom his pimp the was forcing herself into prostitution, and fearing that she would soon start abusing her 14-year-old daughter as well, took her husband’s gun and shot him.

Five years and three months later, the murder trial against her opens on Monday, amid a new debate in France over the state’s failures to protect women from gender-based violence after a new wave of feminicides brutal.

Bacot, 40, faces life imprisonment. A nationwide campaign, with more than half a million signatures, demands that he not have to return to prison.

Everyone knew. Many people had an idea of ​​what could happen to me, in the privacy of my home, the beatings, the violence, the daily humiliations.
“One day, so he wouldn’t kill us, I killed him.

This is what Bacot writes in his recent book Everybody Knew It, published on the eve of his trial. A libro that recounted the terrible personal historia of Bacot, pero que expone, también, el fracaso de las instituciones that no supieron protect a una menor de maltratos y abusos sexuales primero, y después, ya como mujer adulta, de la violencia machista que sufría day after day.

His lawyer, Janine Bonaggiunta, who specializes in domestic violence and family law, hopes to obtain a lesser sentence and said: Since I was little, big mistakes have been made against a minor, then against a woman “

Scared all the time

Valérie grew up in a dysfunctional family – at the age of five, her older brother mistreated her without her mother, an alcoholic, doing anything – but the real nightmare begins when Daniel Polette enters her life. The trucker, 25 years older than Valérie, is his mother’s new companion, although it is not long before he notices the girl. At 12, he raped her for the first time.
“I was scared all the time,” wrote Bacot. According to her defense, from that moment, the young woman is totally under the influence of Polette.
“We can talk about kidnapping, it was almost imprisonment since I was little”, explains Bonaggiunta over the phone, who also defended Jacqueline Sauvage.

As early as 1995, members of the family denounced the abuses against Valérie. From the sentence to four years in prison, Polette only serves two and a half, period during which Valérie’s mother forces her to visit her stepfather and rapist in prison, another example of institutional failure, specifies his lawyer.
“This man has gone through all the flaws in the system,” denounces the victim. After serving his sentence, he returns to Bacot’s house, without any institution, again, with no follow-up. The pattern does not take long to repeat itself. “It all started again quickly. Every day, when I came home from school, he would say to me after the snack: “Come on, go upstairs. I knew what he meant. And I knew it was better for me to obey, ”Bacot said.

At 17, Valérie fell pregnant with her stepfather. Her mother drives her out of the house. Without support, he sees no other way out than going to live with his stepfather until then. His “executioner” corrects his lawyer. The couple, who married in 2008, have four children. The beatings, threats and psychological violence are constant. Until twice, her children went to the police to report the abuse, and no one listened to her.

“You end up living with the idea that you deserve it because you don’t do things right,” says Bacot, who according to his lawyers and the committee created to support his defense, was unaware of the power that his husband was exercising on her. until some time later. It was during the year he spent in prison after the discovery of Polette’s body, which he had buried with the help of two of his children.

In addition to the beatings and rapes, from 2004 Bacot was forced into prostitution in rest areas on a highway. Her husband is a pimp.
“If it had been a Netflix series, people would have said that they had passed”, explains Florian Maïly, spokesperson for the Valérie Bacot support committee created by half a dozen acquaintances of women – friends and neighbors like Maïly, owner of the bowling alley. alley that Bacot has frequented in recent years with his children – so he does not have to go back to prison. Your petition on the change.org platform has already reached more than half a million signatures.

“We are not asking for her to be acquitted,” said Maïly. “There was a man who, despite everything, died. And there has to be a conviction ”. But she considers that the judges could sentence her to one year in prison, which she has already served before obtaining probation, and the rest to a suspended sentence. The bottom line is that you never have to go to jail again, he stresses.
Wave of feminicides.

The Bacot trial is held the same year that France broke the taboo on incest on minors following the publication of the book La Grande Famille, by Camille Kouchner, where the daughter of the former minister and co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières Bernard Kouchner reveals the abuse of his teenage twin brother by their stepfather, the also well-known political scientist Olivier Duhamel. The five-day hearing also takes place after a new wave of brutal feminicides – such as that in May in Mérignac, where a convicted assailant murdered his ex-wife in the middle of the street by burning her with gasoline after having him shoot on it. in the legs so that she cannot flee. which once again exposed the failures of the system.

An awareness of society that the lawyer Bonaggiunta hopes to help Bacot and, above all, that it promotes a profound change of institutions. Because “everyone criticizes, speaks and speaks, but at the same time we continue with the (legal) texts of before, in anchored and ancestral positions. We cannot continue like this, ”he warns.

Meanwhile, Bacot, who does not ask for his acquittal, only a conviction, a minor declared: “I took someone’s life, it is normal that he goes to prison”, a- he said—, wait, this is also a lawsuit against the man who destroyed his life. “I see it as a bit of a fight against him. I hope I am stronger than him and that I can beat him for once in my life. “

Gender-based violence is a widespread burden that women begin to suffer very early on and which has worsened with lockdowns due to the pandemic, reveals the world health agency and specifies that nearly 736 million suffer from it at the hands of a couple or the other people.