Will Valérie Bacot return to prison? This is not what the prosecution wanted on Friday in its requisitions. The attorney general asked for leniency for the accused and a conviction without re-imprisonment taking into account that she had been “a victim” of the violent and pimping husband whom she ended up killing.
“Valérie Bacot could not take the life of the one who terrorized her” but it is necessary “to fix the ban without reincarceration”, declared the Advocate General Eric Jallet before the assizes of Saône-et-Loire, stressing that his four children needed the accused.
Five years in prison including four years suspended
The lawyer thus requested five years in prison, four of which were suspended, which would free Valérie Bacot from the court considering the year she has already spent in pre-trial detention for the assassination of her husband from October 2017 to October 2018. Valérie Bacot, often nicknamed “the new Jacqueline Sauvage”, killed Daniel Polette on March 13, 2016 with a bullet in the neck after more than 24 years of rape, violence and forced prostitution. She faced life imprisonment.
Listening to the requisitions, Valérie Bacot collapsed in tears, losing consciousness, visibly exhausted. Help was rushed to treat her and she seemed to recover by mid-morning. “An Assize Court is the affirmation of the values of civilization which are first and foremost to protect life. A society that does justice to itself is war against each other, said the attorney general. Valérie Bacot is a victim, very clearly, but it is her trial, not an opinion platform. “
Dangerousness considered “very low”
However “a new imprisonment will not bring more element to the protection: the criminological danger is very low”, explained Eric Jallet, estimating that “the sentence must accompany rather than withdraw again”. Throughout the trial, which opened on Monday, the defense depicted the “extreme violence suffered for nearly 25 years” by Valérie Bacot and her “fear of seeing them perpetuate against her own daughter”, Karline, who had 14 years old at the time of the events.
Psychiatrist and psychologist experts have further stressed that the accused had no other “escape” than to “make disappear” her husband as she suffered from his “permanent grip” and his very tight “surveillance”, which l ‘prevented going to file a complaint. Valérie Bacot described how her husband had repeatedly threatened her with a weapon, assuring her that, “next time, he would not miss it”. The man, alcoholic and violent, prostituted her for fourteen years in the back of the family 806, requiring his wife to wear an earpiece in order to be able to hear the “instructions” of her husband who guided the pass.
Raped at the age of 12
At 12, she had been raped for the first time by Daniel Polette who was then her mother’s lover. Convicted and imprisoned in 1996, the man was nevertheless authorized, upon his release from prison in 1997, to return to the family home. And “everything starts again as before”, says Valérie Bacot in her book Everyone knew (Fayard), published last month. When she becomes pregnant at 17, Valérie Bacot leaves to settle down with “Dany”, explaining this surprising decision by the need to offer a “father” to her child whom she wanted to keep.
The case is reminiscent of the case of Jacqueline Sauvage, who became the symbol of domestic violence after being convicted of having killed her husband, then pardoned in 2016. Ms. Bacot’s lawyers, Janine Bonaggiunta and Nathalie Tomasini, have ‘elsewhere defended Jacqueline Sauvage. The trigger will be the fear that her daughter Karline will suffer the same fate when, at 14, she confesses to her mother that her father asked her “how she was sexually”.
On March 13, 2016, after yet another pass behind the 806, Valérie Bacot grabs a pistol from her husband and shoots him in the back of his neck. “I know I’m going back to jail. I put everything in order, ”said Me Bacot on Thursday, even referring to a“ bus card ”that she had paid for her youngest son. “But it hurts me to leave [mes enfants] She added.