Turnaround. In mid-April, the Paris prosecutor’s office finally requested a trial for a police officer accused of having called a complainant for sexual assault a “whore”, after first filing her complaint, we learned on Saturday from a close source. folder.
In February 2022, the then 34-year-old young woman had filed a first complaint in a Paris police station for “sexual assault while intoxicated”, leading to the opening of an investigation, revealed by Mediapart. A police officer had left a message on her answering machine asking her to complete her complaint.
A badly hung up handset
Believing to have hung up, we heard the official joke, then add: “She really is a whore. (…) Damn, she refuses the confrontation and moreover the whore. As if by chance. In fact it was just to break his balls, I’m sure. (…) Whore, big whore”, he concluded, before the handset was hung up. The prosecution had closed the procedure because “the remarks had been made without the intention of bringing them to the knowledge of the complainant”.
Seized of these facts after a new complaint, an examining magistrate put the policeman in examination on January 3. In its requisitions of April 19, of which AFP was aware, the Paris prosecutor’s office reiterates its assessment that the policeman spoke “in confidence to his colleagues and without the intention of bringing (his remarks) to the knowledge of the complainant”, but considers that as this offense falls under the law of the press, the debate on the merits can only take place before the court.
Poor victim care
He is therefore asking for a trial in the police court for “non-public insult because of sex”. The final decision on a hearing rests with the investigating judge. Asked by AFP, the policeman’s lawyer, who admitted the facts during the investigation, did not react on Saturday. This case had given rise to numerous criticisms of the police’s treatment of victims of sexual violence.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had estimated that the policeman had “no longer his place” in the profession, while the ex-prefect of police Didier Lallement had seized the “police of the police” (IGPN). “The prosecution had dismissed without even questioning my client. The judicial path on sexual and gender-based violence does not go through the prosecution,” said Me Arié Alimi. On the sexual assault itself, the lawyer indicated that he had requested that an investigating judge be seized.