“He throws himself on me and kisses me forcibly, I turn my head, I tell him “stop”, twice, I find myself sitting on his sofa, him standing in front of me, and he imposes oral sex on me. » Thursday March 21, at the bar of the Paris criminal court, Solène (the first names of the complainants have been changed) describes the rape that she claims to have suffered during a shooting in Salim Berrada’s studio, in March 2015 in Paris. During the photo session, she had drunk the glass of vodka-orange that he had offered her and, very quickly, had felt an abnormal form of intoxication.
“He goes to the bathroom. I am in a daze, I see my things on the living room table, I have three steps to take to get to this table, but I have a lot of difficulty, I stagger, I no longer have the strength in my legs. He comes back, grabs me and throws me on the couch. I realize that he had gone to get a condom, and I understand that I’m not going to be able to escape, that this is really going to happen. I’m preparing to be raped. » The 31-year-old young woman completes her testimony in front of a petrified audience.
Salim Berrada has the floor, in his glass box: “It was truly the most consensual relationship that could existasserts the 38-year-old accused. I remember we kissed near the kitchen and continued the photo shoot afterwards. I know exactly what happened. It was a perfectly agreed relationship. I am absolutely certain of it, I know it, I have experienced it. What she says never happened. »
“Glance of Fury”
This is how the trial of the “Tinder rapist” unfolds, tried for thirteen rapes and four sexual assaults that occurred between 2014 and 2016 during meetings with this promising fashion photographer to whom the complainants, approached on social networks, went to just thinking of enriching their book. Since Tuesday March 19, young women have taken the stand one after the other to deliver terrible stories – many are convinced that they have been drugged. Then Salim Berrada gets up to tell his version of the facts, from the antipodes.
Alice, 31, remembers the sound of the camera being placed on the ground and the photographer jumping on her with a “glare of fury”her inertia for fear of a violent reaction and her tears throughout the rape of which she accuses Salim Berrada. “It didn’t happen like that. I remember that we had consensual sex, that we laughed a lot. She has never cried, nor has anyone I had sex with in my life. »
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