A former director of the municipal police of Roubaix (North) was sentenced Tuesday July 28 by the judicial court of Douai to one year in prison suspended for violence committed on three former companions. Dominique P., 48, was prosecuted for " violence without incapacity ", on four women who were his companions between 2013 and January 2018.
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Only one of them had lodged a complaint for “ physical and psychological ” violence committed between October 2016 and January 2018, “ the others being cited as witnesses but considered by the prosecution as victims ”, told AFP. lawyer for the complainant, Me Manon Dugast. The court finally convicted him for the acts committed against three of these women, part of the period being prescribed for one of them, and acquitted him for those denounced by the fourth woman, according to a judicial source.
Contrary to what the defendant had requested, this conviction will be well entered in his criminal record, the same source said. “ My client has been the victim of physical and psychological violence. We had SMS exchanges in which he recognized violence, hair pulling, slaps, insults (...) but at the hearing, on the rest he disputed everything, ”said Me Dugast.
“ My client had a medical certificate proving the major psychological impact ,” she said. " It was mainly hair pulling, slapping, not lesions that permanently marked the body ", but the medical certificate confirmed according to the lawyer " an obvious chronicity of violence ".
At the origin of a unit combating violence against women
Director of the municipal police of Roubaix from November 2016, Dominique P. had resigned in the summer of 2019. Previously, he had notably commanded the departmental road safety squadron of the North, then a departmental gendarmerie company in Réunion before to join the General Staff of the Hauts-de-France gendarmerie, according to a press release published in 2017 by the town hall of Roubaix.
In Reunion, he had set up a unit to fight against violence against women and "reported it regularly to my client, telling her that he had seen women beaten and that it was not because she was taking a few slaps that she was a beaten woman , ”said Mr. Dugast. Contacted, the defendant's lawyer was not immediately reachable.