She is speaking for the first time.
Talia, 34, now a mother, lodged a complaint in April 2020 against her stepfather, Frédéric Pichard, a renowned baker from the 15th arrondissement, whom she accuses of rape, and her husband, Geoffrey Pichard.
She recounts the psychological hold she experienced, with conditioning by fear, threat, harassment and constant control.
Read alsoSex scandals at Maison Pichard, renowned bakery in Paris
Why make public today what you have suffered?
TALIA.
It took a long time for me to put into words what I had been through, to understand that I was a victim, to express anger, quite simply to be on the side of life. At the beginning of 2019, I contacted the Elle's imagine'nt association which allowed me to leave the bakery with my son six months later, and I filed a complaint in May 2020. I have been in therapy for a year and a half with a psychologist specializing in sexual trauma, I am also followed by the police station psychologist and an EMDR specialist
(Editor's note: Eye movement Desensitization and reprocessing, desensitization and reprocessing by eye movements)
.
Yet even today I live with shame at what M. Pichard has done to me.
I have a lot of trouble with my body, with the image that I send back, I am ashamed to know that it touched me, dirtied me.
Yet it is he who should be ashamed of himself.
At first you refused to talk to the police, why?
At first I just wanted to be able to leave, and not file a complaint. I did not feel free to speak, there was a real danger. The father of my son, my husband, also raped me in the marital context, and despite my revelations about his father, he made the choice not to support me, to be in denial. He did not realize the gravity and extent of the crimes. Geoffrey has always been afraid of his father, he has been under his influence since his childhood. He was brought up in a normality of violence, of perversion. He knew that I was going to be summoned to the police, and that I might speak. I was afraid of M. Pichard, he knew my address. Talking about what is going on in the family is a betrayal for him. For them, I was the one who engineered everything. And I was afraid that they would not believe me. Even today, I'm afraid every day,I have a 10 year old son who goes to his father. Recently, I filed a complaint on his behalf against his grandfather for moral harassment of a minor under 15 years old. My father-in-law told him horrible things about me.
How it all began ?
The first time, I was just 18 years old.
It was July, we were on vacation with my husband Geoffrey and his parents.
We slept in the same house.
One night we were frightened by a loud noise.
My in-laws offered to sleep with them.
I found myself between Mr. Pichard and Geoffrey.
During the night I felt a hand caressing me between my legs, I thought it was my husband, but no.
My step dad put his hand in the panties and took advantage.
I didn't move because I was in a state of dumbfoundedness.
I pretended to be asleep.
The next day, I told myself that I had had a nightmare.
After that ?
My stepfather acted like nothing had happened. He drove me to a place, sat down, he had sunglasses on, with a little smile, and he said to me, “That night I raped you. I cried, I understood that I had not dreamed. He explained to me that it was a kind of test, to see if I had objected. In fact, he manages to justify the slightest of his behaviors and, we do not have to ask questions. Mr. Pichard is a kind of guru. At the beginning of my relationship with Geoffrey, he said to me: “If you marry my son, it's like marrying me. “By marrying Geoffrey, I knew that I was also marrying the family, the bakery… Mr. Pichard was very protective, very reassuring. From the outside, it seemed ideal to me, we were a family. But little by little, I fell under his influence,he isolated me. He wanted to manage everything, even our sex life. When I made love with Geoffrey for the first time, a little before 17 years old, the next day Geoffrey spoke about it in the lab
(Editor's note: pastry)
.
Immediately M. Pichard came to see me and said: “That's it, you did it.
He asked me to find out everything.
I answered all of his questions.
With M. Pichard, you don't ask yourself if you want to answer, you answer, and that's it.
The sexual abuse lasted, according to your account, for fifteen years?
It was crescendo, M. Pichard touched me more and more often. He said that he shouldn't say it, that no one would understand, because he was a family model different from the others, that it was beautiful, that he loved me. The first time, it happened in my room. Then he continued for fifteen years, from my 18 years old until I left the bakery. For two years, every other week, he took me home from the work-study training center, stopped in the woods, and raped me in the car. Then it was in the apartment where I lived with my husband, he was asking his son for the keys while he was working in the lab. I wasn't doing anything, I was waiting for it to end, telling myself that it was a bad time to pass.I turned so as not to see his face and feel his drops of sweat trickling down my face. I also tried to find excuses, sometimes it worked, but other times he got angry, it upset him. For him, I was an outlet, when he couldn't get what he wanted, he was in a very bad mood, aggressive with the employees, I felt like I was responsible for this outburst of anger, the rapes that followed were more violent, as if he was avenging himself for not having had what he wanted right away.I felt like I was responsible for this outburst of anger, the rapes that followed were more violent, as if he was avenging himself for not having had what he wanted right away.I felt like I was responsible for this outburst of anger, the rapes that followed were more violent, as if he was avenging himself for not having had what he wanted right away.
How did you hold out?
I imagined that my life was that, it was like a spiral and I didn't think I could get out of it, I was cut off from the world, like in a sect.
I no longer thought for myself, M. Pichard controlled my thoughts.
I am a believer, and I imagined that I had done something wrong in another life and paid for it in this one.
It might sound ridiculous, I know.
After I got pregnant with Geoffrey, G… was born, and he was a light in my tunnel, because I couldn't sink, because he was there.
And he was also a driving force behind him, because I didn't want him to be raised by this family.
I wanted him to feel free too.
