“It was obvious that he was violent. He tried by all means to destroy his ex. Killing his daughter was the worst he could do to get to her. On the phone, Migueline Rosset’s voice choked. A week may have passed since the murder of Chloé, 5, stabbed in the family apartment in Courbevoie, the emotion of this lawyer specializing in domestic violence remains strong. “I still see her in the office, this kid, a little girl full of life. The main suspect, his father, succumbed to his injuries 48 hours after the incident. As the police had just broken down the door, Mickaël Rouffiac, 41-year-old IT director, stabbed himself in the throat before jumping from the 2nd floor.
If he could not be heard, the first elements of the investigation, opened for assassination, leave little doubt about the context: the child was probably killed in the context of the conflict which opposed him to his ex wife. “For years, my client had been living in a climate of psychological violence, there were cameras in the apartment, she was geolocated. But since February, the violence was also physical, ”assures Me Migueline Rosset. According to our information, Mickaël Rouffiac was sentenced on March 16 to an awareness course for violence without incapacity. Four other complaints have also been filed against him in the past two months, three for violence, one for rape.
Above all, a few hours before the tragedy, the family court of Nanterre had issued a protection order, prohibiting him from coming into contact with his former companion, also transferring parental authority to the latter. “Justice has not failed, the case of this woman has been taken very seriously, notes her lawyer. But she fell into a trap. The audience had been held the day before, on Wednesday. Mickaël Rouffiac had gone home with his daughter. Thursday afternoon, just informed of the decision, he had called his ex-girlfriend to tell her that in accordance with the order, he was leaving the apartment. Chloe will be found in the night, lying in the bathtub. “He was determined to break his wife, insists Migueline Rosset. He had gone so far as to call his employer to say that she was giving information to their competitors. It was wrong, of course. He wanted to destroy her, he used their daughter. »
Spain, a pioneer in the recognition of feminicides by proxy
“It is not uncommon, in cases of domestic violence, for the child to become the means of reaching the other parent”, underlines Me Anne Bouillon, a lawyer who also specializes in violence against women. This is usually manifested by the deprivation, overnight, of an extra-curricular activity, of going on vacation, of visiting friends or even of going to a medical appointment. In the most serious cases, children are abducted, sometimes taken abroad, for months or even years. “Infanticide to punish the mother is this logic pushed to its climax, this feeling of absolute omnipotence, including life and death”, insists the council.
Since January 1, 2022, Spain, a pioneer in the fight against violence against women, has broadened its definition of “feminicides” to take into account in particular these substitution murders, that is to say inflicted on a loved one, often a child, to make a woman suffer. If, on the merits, this does not change the processing of the case or the penalty incurred, this incrimination makes it possible to better understand the phenomenon.
In France too, these infanticides committed against a backdrop of domestic violence now appear in official statistics. According to the latest report from the Ministry of the Interior, in 2021, twelve children from ten different families were killed “in the context of domestic violence without the other parent being killed”. In 2020, there were six. In 2019, 22. Differences which illustrate the difficulty of accounting for this type of murder because it is necessary, in each case, to establish a direct link with the context of domestic violence.
“Glad to have put you through hell”
In some cases, however, there is no room for doubt. In 2016, just hours after the lifeless body of 3-year-old Léa was found, her father, Cédric Mahieu, sent his ex-wife a letter of unspeakable cruelty. “You wanted a new life. Now you can do it again without Léa (…). Be as unhappy as possible. I regret nothing. Glad to have made you live a hell, “writes the man, who will be arrested after more months on the run. Me Luc Hintermann, who defended the young woman since her divorce petition, remembers every detail of this extraordinary file. From the first meeting with the judge, where his client confided in him having accepted joint custody after his ex-companion threatened her, until that disastrous Saturday in May 2016.
“One day, she calls me to tell me that her ex-husband arrived very drunk to pick up the little one and that she refused to entrust her to him. At that time, he jumped on the bonnet of the car as it was driving, ”recalls the Haut-Savoyard lawyer. Luc Hintermann manages to quickly obtain an appointment with the family court judge. “The tragedy is that the summons was brought to his home on a Saturday when he had custody of Léa. The murder will be committed the same day. In 2019, Cédric Mahieu was sentenced to thirty years in prison. “What is striking in this case is that he loved his daughter. My client also thought that he could hurt her, but not their daughter. »
To cause suffering “beyond the imaginable”
Of “feminicide by proxy”, there was also talk at the end of March at the Assize Court of Avignon, during the trial of Sergio Gil Gonzalez. This 41-year-old Spaniard, alcoholic, was tried for the murder of his daughter Sarah, 11, found drowned in the Rhône on July 18, 2020, her wrists and ankles shackled by cords. His wife had left him a year and a half earlier after yet another scene of violence. She had turned the page, he hadn’t. That day, when he had asked to spend time with his daughter, he still begged her to give him another chance. The response had been firm. “No”, written ten times in a row in a text message. A few hours later, Sarah was killed.
“At the trial, he acknowledged the facts but did not give any real explanations, he just spoke of an impulse”, recounts the victim’s lawyer, Me Marc Geiger, for whom the desire to make the mother suffer is “obvious”. “At the hearing, he gave sordid details of how she died. It didn’t add anything, other than reaching out to his ex-wife a bit more. “And the lawyer to make the link with organized crime:” when you want to make someone suffer, you kill their family to make them suffer beyond the imaginable. »