He did not want her to leave him, so on the evening of August 8, 2019 Maurice Sitrita, "
jealous and violent
", disfigured and then strangled the "
gay and serious
" Corinne Wajoka.
The Nouméa Assize Court sentenced him on Friday July 2 to life imprisonment, with 22 years of security, beyond the requisitions.
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“
Corinne, neither forgetting, nor forgiveness
”, could one read in red capitals on the walls of the court of the Caledonian capital, on the occasion of this resounding trial, held in front of a full house. "
It was a case of exceptional violence and cruelty towards a young girl full of qualities, who was only 18 years old
", declared Maître Denis Milliard, lawyer of the parents of the victim, saluting "
the courage jurors
”. At the verdict, Maurice Sitrita, harmonious features and thin beard, who did not deny anything of the facts, welcomed his sentence, the heaviest incurred, without a blink, like a fatality.
On the night of August 8 to 9, 2019, in a wood on the edge of the beach in Vallon Dore (outskirts of Nouméa), the then 21-year-old young man kicked and punched Corinne, fractured her the forehead, the jaw, the orbit then this practitioner of Thai boxing "
made a key
" to her and strangled her.
Previously, during sex, he nicked her sex with his guitarist's fingernails.
"
We know very well that he forced her,
" thundered the accusation, recalling that Corinne had just decided to break.
"
He knocked all the time, for nothing, even when she was sleeping
"
The girl's body was found the next day, hidden under branches, by walkers, while "
Momo
" had already reached Lifou, his native island, where he was quickly apprehended.
At the sight of the gendarmes, he had inflicted stab wounds on the thorax, then making believe "
a desire to die together
" with Corinne.
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“
I identified my daughter, she was unrecognizable.
She was afraid of him, she was his toy, his thing
", testified in tears her mother, Marie, praising the qualities of her daughter"
stolen by the wickedness of the man
".
The debates highlighted the joyful, pious and applied personality at Corinne's high school, until her meeting in May 2017 with Maurice, free from mental pathology as concluded by an expert psychiatrist, intelligent but violent and sickly jealous.
“
She told me that if she left him he was going to kill her.
He knocked all the time, for nothing, even when she was asleep.
I saw the bruises, the bites on her chest, her back,
”her best friend, Urarii Taputo, told the bar.
"
He was spying on her, she had no more life
."
Increase in domestic violence in the archipelago
“
It’s true. I lacked discernment
”, admitted Maurice, whose itinerary was marked by the conflictual separation of his parents and the suicide by hanging of his older brother in 2016.
During his indictment, Advocate General Christian Pasta, who totally excluded the thesis of a “
joint pseudo-suicide
”, referred to a case “
as simple as that
”: “
She said to him: I'm leaving you. He answers: I kill you
”. Christian Pasta, who required 25 years of imprisonment, with a security sentence of two thirds (16.5 years), also qualified Corinne "
of emblematic figure of domestic violence in New Caledonia, champion territory of France
", with a rate four times higher than in Metropolitan France. “
Here, the women are beaten like plaster, that's enough!
», He asserted.
Faced with implacable facts, Maître Julien Marty, lawyer for the accused, focused his defense on "
the chain of silences which led
" to this tragedy, referring in particular to the management of the school or the gendarmes that Corinne's mother had gone to. see.
"
Corinne is also the symbol of general indifference and the lack of reaction from the authorities,
" he lamented.
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The increase in domestic violence in the archipelago also reflects a freedom of speech around this taboo, particularly sensitive among the Kanak population. “
I hope there will be a before and an after Corinne. We must overcome this omerta
”, told AFP a mother, present at the meeting.