Cécile Bourgeon has exhausted all possible legal remedies. Fiona’s mother, sentenced to 20 years in prison for the girl’s death, saw her appeal dismissed on Wednesday.
“After having examined both the admissibility of the appeal and the procedural documents, the Court of Cassation finds that there is, in this case, no means of such a nature as to allow the admission of the appeal”, indicates the criminal division of the highest French judicial court in its decision.
Next request for sentence adjustment
“It’s a page that turns” and a decision “which puts an end to nearly 10 years of suffering for the civil parties, of course, but also for Cécile Bourgeon” reacted his lawyer Me Renaud Portejoie.
After having spent “more than seven years in detention”, this one “is now planning on a request for adjustment of sentence which should be mentioned in the coming months”, he added.
Staging in front of the cameras
Cécile Bourgeon and her companion Berkane Makhlouf, a drug-addicted couple, had reported the disappearance of Fiona on May 12, 2013, suggesting a kidnapping in a park in Clermont-Ferrand. After four months of investigation, they confessed that the girl was dead and buried near a lake. The body was never found.
Since then, Cécile Bourgeon and Berkane Makhlouf have rejected responsibility for the death. Tried at first instance in 2016, the first had been acquitted of the fatal blows and sentenced to five years in prison for having lied, the second had been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
A “disgusting defense system”
On appeal, the two defendants were sentenced to 20 years in 2018. The Court of Cassation had canceled this conviction of the Haute-Loire Assize Court in 2019, referring the case to that of the Rhône at the end of 2020. Cécile Bourgeon had was then sentenced to 20 years in prison for the fatal blows on Fiona, her companion to 18 years in prison.
“We were told of a fifth trial which will not take place. She is definitely found guilty of the murder of her own daughter. She never revealed her truth and we all remember her disgusting defense system which leads to her remaining safe, away from children, for a long time to come, “said Me Charles Fribourg, the lawyer for the father of Fiona Nicolas Chafoulais.