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"Even today, I am unable to shower alone": the ordeal of Marie, raped and left for dead

2021-10-22T10:47:59.111Z


STORY - While the verdict of the “rape backpacker” trial is expected this Friday, October 22, the young woman speaks for the first time, ten years later, to recount her Stations of the Cross.


Marie wakes up one morning on November 4, 2012 in a garbage container. It is six o'clock. She doesn't remember anything. Simply of a man who, as she types in the entrance code to her building, asks her for directions. He is young, he looks charming. She remembers his honeyed smile. But it is late and it has been a long evening. No time for strangers coming out of nowhere. "

Sorry, I do not know this neighborhood,

" says Marie. So the charming young man insists, he complains, says he is "

in trouble

", asks for "

a hug

". Marie does not have time to retaliate that, already, the man of 1.85 m takes her in his arms. The embrace lasts a few seconds. An eternity. "

After a while, I put my hand on his shoulder and push him away, delicately

", she specifies, before blowing:"

Suddenly, his gaze has changed,

" unfathomable darkness.

Read alsoSix rapes and an attempted murder: "the rape backpacker" back before the judges

This man is Florian Varin, 21 years old and five rapes on the clock. Niort, La Rochelle, Rennes ... He scours the west of France and lives on odd jobs. Driver Deliveroo, he knows every lane by heart - an essential asset to commit his misdeeds. He was finally arrested in 2015 and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment by the Haute-Garonne Court of Assizes. During his trial, he was described by psychiatric experts as a “

sexual predator devoid of empathy

”. His lawyers appealed and he was tried again in 2018 by the Tarn Court of Appeal, which also decides for 30 years in prison. But his lawyers are not giving up. They seize the Court of Cassation for procedural flaw, and the decision of the Court of Appeal of Tarn is annulled.

This Monday, October 18, therefore began a third trial, before the Court of Appeal of Tarn-et-Garonne, in Montauban.

Along with six other women, Marie, his latest victim, is a civil party.

She is the only one to accuse him not only of "rape" but also of "attempted murder".

Ten years after the tragedy, she hopes to obtain redress.

“The

whole stake of this trial will be played on the count of 'attempted murder'

, she explains to us.

If he is convicted 'only' of rape, he takes 30 years.

If he is convicted of 'attempted murder', it is life imprisonment

”.

"He thought I was dead and thought he had carefully hidden my body"

The evening of the tragedy, Marie is passing through Toulouse to pass the bar, after six years of law. She spends an evening with friends. She takes one of them back in the car, a girl who has had a little too much to drink, then she walks towards the small studio of one of her friends, where she is staying. She thinks about the exam. In four days, she will be officially a lawyer. Marie is 25 years old. She is far from suspecting that she will never be a lawyer, but that she will spend the next ten years in the courts.

All it took was one meeting, one man in the street, who asked him for a "

hug

". She pushes him away. What follows is an “

outburst of violence

”. Under the blows, Marie loses consciousness. “

When I wake up, I'm at the end of the entrance hall. I fix the polystyrene tiles to the ceiling

”. Marie has trouble breathing. She feels something heavy on her stomach. “

He's straddling me and strangling me with both hands. I felt my eyes pop out of my sockets and saw myself die. He strangled me so hard that I had a crush on my windpipe. Even today, I have the traces of his thumbs on my neck, in the shape of a small heart

”.

At this moment, Marie's phone rings. It is her friend who is worried: she had just sent him an SMS saying that she was in front of the building and that she was going upstairs. Yet she is still not there. In a calm and reassuring voice, Florian Varin answers. "

Hello? Yes, everything is fine, she's in the bathroom, I can't pass her on to you, but she's coming

”. The call lasted 51 seconds. Meanwhile, Marie suffocates. "

Then he holds me with one hand and, with the other, he pulls down my pantyhose and rips my panties." I remember his hand inside me perfectly. In a last breath, I said: 'Take it all but not this'. I lost consciousness a second time

”.

“Even today, I have trouble showering and I can't go and throw the trash. Touching a garbage bag also triggers vomiting reflexes ”

Marie wakes up in the dark. Seized with anguish, she gives a violent punch over her head to open what she thinks is the trunk of her attacker's car. It is actually a cover that opens with a loud crash. Marie then understands that she is in the garbage room of the building. “

He thought I was dead and thought he had carefully hidden my body. I'm trying to get out of the container. It's super high. I don't know how, I manage to get out. I take a few steps, hampered by my tights lowered to mid-thigh. I feel a lump in my tights: it's my panties. I lower my dress which is raised to the belly and I go up to the second floor, at my friend's place

".

At 7 am, Marie is taken care of by the Samu.

At 1 p.m., she was examined by a forensic doctor.

He is then given the right to shower.

She is incapable of it.

I felt like a 9 year old kid.

It was my mother who, arrived in Toulouse in an emergency, washed me.

Even today, I have trouble showering and I can't go and throw the trash.

Touching a garbage bag also triggers vomiting reflexes

”.

Involved in six rape cases

Four days later, Florian Varin is confused by his DNA, found, in particular, on the handle of the interior door of the local garbage cans. Marie learns that he has been known to the police since he was 17 for rape. He lives with his grandparents in Brittany. He is a country doctor, she a psychiatric nurse. His mother abandoned him when he was young, when he revealed to his father that his mother was cheating on him.

Florian Varin is already implicated in other cases of rape. Some were 16 years old at the time of the incident. Questioned by the investigators, he sometimes assures that it is about "

plans ass which were consenting

", sometimes that he had "

misinterpreted the green lights

". "

He also has audio recordings in which he prompts the victims to say that they like it: he uses them as evidence proving that they are consenting

", tells us Marie, adding that the respondent would have been “

Offered a rape for his birthday

” during which “

he tore off a kid's tampon before raping her

”.

But, today, the lawyers of Florian Varin, Me Alexandre Martin and Me Emmanuelle Franck, assure that the speech of their client is quite different.

After nine years behind bars, they say he has changed.

He would recognize the rapes and the gravity of his actions.

The penalists believe that a psychiatric expertise, which they requested during the second appeal trial, could have changed his conviction;

hence the need for this third trial.

The verdict of the jurors is expected this Friday, October 22 in the afternoon.

Marie, she only hopes for one thing: to be able to turn the page.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-10-22

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