She is accused of having signed a false deed fifteen years ago to marry her predecessor, then in a coma. The former socialist mayor of Pontault-Combault (Seine-et-Marne), Monique Delessard, will face justice from this Thursday before the Paris Assize Court. The facts date back to October 30, 2007. Monique Delessard, then first assistant, initials a marriage certificate uniting the mayor of Pontault-Combault Jacques Heuclin to Armelle Reffait, his concubine with whom he has a daughter.
On the date of the marriage certificate, allegedly signed at the home of Jacques Heuclin, the “groom” was hospitalized in Paris, in a coma, intubated and untransportable. He will die the next day.
She faces fifteen years in prison.
Monique Delessard was initially sent back to correctional. Sentenced in Melun in 2009 to two months’ suspended prison sentence, then on appeal in Paris in 2010 to fifteen months’ suspended prison sentence and a sentence of ineligibility, the elected official had lodged an appeal in cassation, considering that the facts which he was accused of constituted a crime and not an offense and therefore deserved to be tried before an assize court. The Court of Cassation had in 2011 canceled his conviction, and the case was referred to the Assizes of Paris.
At 73, Monique Delessard faces fifteen years of imprisonment for forgery in public writing by a person in charge of a public service mission. Since her questioning, she claims to have “signed this act in good faith, without thinking that it could pose a problem”.
A succession of false
Jacques Heuclin’s former chief of staff, Serge Crippa, and a former deputy mayor, Gérard Briaud, who had signed the marriage certificate as witnesses, were sentenced by the Paris Court of Appeal to respectively twelve and six months suspended sentence. The town clerk, who had forged the mayor’s signature, was given a three-month suspended prison sentence. As for the widow, Armelle Reffait, she had been given a ten-month suspended prison sentence. The doctor who had written a false medical certificate to obtain an “in extremis” marriage procedure had been released.
The deception had been brought to light by a complaint brought by three daughters of Jacques Heuclin born from a first union, who wanted to obtain the annulment of the fraudulent marriage. All three are civil parties. The verdict is expected Friday.