We had to wait for the 2021 edition of Larousse to see the word “feminicide” enter in the famous dictionary. Here is the definition: “Murder of a woman or a young girl, because of her belonging to the feminine sex. With this clarification: “Sexist crime, feminicide is not recognized as such by the French Penal Code. While waiting for the justice of our country to make its aggiornamento, this term has interfered in the public debate. It replaces more and more the detestable expression of “crime of passion” attached to so many atrocities committed by a man on his companion, current or former.
Like the murder of Chantal Cécillon by her husband, the rugby player Marc Cécillon, on the night of August 7 to 8, 2004 in Saint-Savin (Isère), four 357 Magnum bullets fired at close range. In The Cecillion Affair. Chantal, story of a feminicide (Les Presses de la Cité), Ludovic Ninet brings this “small and delicate woman [1,59 m, 48 kg] “, remained in the shadow of her colossus of husband, former captain of the XV of France, throughout their common existence, and even after he took her life. This mother of two daughters was 43 years old.
“It was not my initial title, it was offered to me and I found it perfect, explains the author, a former sports journalist. We clearly know where we stand. This completely destroys the notion of a crime of passion which was put forward in particular during the second trial. In December 2008, Marc Cécillon, defended by Éric Dupond-Moretti, current Minister of Justice, had seen his initial sentence, pronounced two years earlier, reduced from 20 to 14 years in prison by the Nîmes Court of Appeal. He will be released from the Muret detention center, near Toulouse, on June 27, 2011.
Known skids, but you
His hours of glory in the France team and in Bourgoin-Jallieu, the flagship team of French rugby in the 1990s, his notorious alcoholism – his blood alcohol level was evaluated between 2.61 and 3.12 g / l of blood when he killed his wife – his inability to negotiate post-career… Everything was said and written about Cécillon after the murder, to the point of falling into a form of self-pity totally out of step with the atrocity of the act. But nothing about the victim, except for a single press article, listed by Ludovic Ninet.
“Seeing how everything was centered on him still leaves me speechless today”, reacts the latter, who first thought of making his fifth book a work of fiction, after three novels and an essay on rugby. “As soon as I became interested in the subject, I wanted to understand it better, and I started contacting people to talk about it. The more it went, the more I wanted to leave the real first names, the real city. The changeover is when I found myself for the first time in front of Chantal’s grave, in May 2018. There I said to myself: “you can’t write a fiction”. It would have taken away strength. »
Three testimonials from women
As expected, the author often came up against the wall of silence during his investigation. Cécillon was a “demi-god” in Bourgoin, where he was forgiven and forgiven for everything. A lord in the medieval sense, above the law, who multiplied female conquests while showing himself to be sickly jealous of Chantal.
And what about the world of rugby? Ludovic Ninet returns in the book to the first trial of November 2006, with the parade at the helm of Bernard Lapasset (then president of the FFR) and Serge Blanco (president of the LNR) who will paint “the idyllic portrait of a “extraordinary man” [Blanco]”never sanctioned in 46 international selections, exemplary captain [Lapasset, devant les télévisions]””. In the room, Céline, Chantal’s youngest daughter, is bursting with rage. As she will not digest her father’s rehabilitation a posteriori, invited as if nothing had happened at the gathering of the Berjalian golden generation for the 20th anniversary of the 1997 French championship final, three years after having taken his two daughters to court for mismanagement of his heritage.
Thanks to the testimonies of Céline, but also of Marinette, her mother, and Huguette, her best friend, Chantal’s personality emerges from limbo under the pen of the former journalist.
I wanted to tell another story about the Cécillon affair, to restore some form of balance. I tried to show the person she was, luminous and sunny, as I was told. It is a story of self-made emancipation. She did not spend her life in shrinks, she was not supported by victims’ associations. She built her project little by little, having endured unbearable things, which testifies to an incredible life force, and makes this savage elimination even more terrible. »
Chantal was not only the woman deceived, humiliated, killed then anonymized in a case that bears the name of her executioner. She was also a loved person whose flame Ludovic Ninet rekindles with infinite modesty, which enabled him to win the trust of the three other women at the heart of this work. “This community of women has a very symbolic side, he slips. Yes, it is a man who wrote this book, but it is important that we take our part, to endorse a form of responsibility in the actions of men and to associate ourselves with the fight of women. »
In 2022, 109 of them died in France at the hands of their spouse or an ex, according to the Féminicides collective by companions or ex. Almost one victim every three days. “People wrote to me after the book came out,” says Ludovic Ninet. It tells Chantal’s story, but it’s also the story of all abused women. »