"
There was a legal response but it did not go through a prosecution
."
The Rennes prosecutor justified Tuesday, March 23 the classification without follow-up to a complaint filed in September by Magali Blandin against her husband, who confessed to having killed her with a baseball bat.
To read also: Murder of Magali Blandin: the husband "wants to pay for his gesture", assures his lawyer
The alleged feminicide of this 42-year-old woman caused a stir in public opinion and several politicians and associations have pointed the finger at justice.
“
The couple had just split up.
She was killed with a baseball bat.
Baseball bat.
She had filed a complaint for violence.
The complaint was dismissed.
In fact, nothing changes.
It is despairing and revolting,
”wrote on Twitter Laurence Rossignol, socialist senator and former minister.
“
Stop violence against women.
Fright and despair for Magali Blandin mother of four children, massacred by her husband.
She had filed a complaint for domestic violence.
The complaint was closed, it's revolting,
”said Ségolène Royal, former minister on the same social network.
Feminist activist Caroline De Haas also implicated the prosecution in a tweet.
“
Magali Blandin had lodged a complaint in September against her ex-husband.
Closed without follow-up.
He murdered her in February (...)
”.
The Rennes prosecutor, Philippe Astruc, who says he does not want to “
argue with anyone
”, however wished to explain to AFP the reasons for the filing of this complaint on September 4.
In the summer of 2020, Magali Blandin, a specialist educator, announces to her husband that she is going to take a personal bank account, a decision that tends to strain relations in this couple who has four children and who married in 2003 after having married. to be met in 1996. On the evening of September 2, during a heated discussion, "
she says he lifts the bench and that she falls on her buttocks back
" and decides to leave the home.
The next day, she files a complaint with the Montauban-de-Bretagne brigade and the husband, who has no criminal record for violence, is placed in police custody, while the four parents of the couple will be heard.
Consciousness examination
Magali Blandin “
passes the protocol, goes to the IMJ (forensic institute).
A medical certificate does not note any physical lesions but evokes a significant tachycardia
, linked to stress, explains Philippe Astruc.
She also evokes the facts in 2005, 2013, 2019, 2020 and the authoritarian character of her husband, and says: Generally, the violence is more pushing, insults of all kinds, denigration
”.
The husband, who acknowledges having lifted the bench, "
says he is the victim of physical violence from his wife, which Ms. Blandin recognizes and what in civil proceedings, the children will confirm
."
Also, the magistrate, who decides on the classification, considers that "
the intensity of this fact does not justify a referral to the criminal court
".
"
Given an egalitarian approach to the law (...), it would naturally have been necessary to prosecute Magali Blandin for the violence, recognized, that she was able to exert on her husband
", says Philippe Astruc.
“
The choice that was made was rather to set up social support,
” explains Philippe Astruc, with an interview with a psychologist, contact with two victim support associations and support for the social worker in the gendarmerie.
"
I made my examination of conscience and that is why this decision was taken and that I assume its responsibility
", said the prosecutor, stressing that 1,414 complaints for domestic violence in 2020, against 720 in 2018, were treated. at the Rennes court, with 330 deferrals in 2020 against 100 two years earlier.
"
To say that justice is not doing its job and that nothing has changed is very unfair,
" he said.