He faced a sentence of life imprisonment for a repeated rape.
The public prosecutor had requested a 22-year sentence against this 45-year-old man, a repeat offense for two rapes committed in 2004. The assize court finally sentenced him to 16 years in prison for having raped his wife on the night of September 2 to 3, 2020, at his wife's home in Cheptainville (Essonne).
A crime that the accused denied until the end.
At the material time, the couple was more or less separated.
The woman wanted a divorce, explaining to the audience that her husband had been violent and had raped her in the past.
A separation that she delayed so as not to deprive their daughter of a father, but also, she explained, because of the weight of traditions and religion.
The two spouses indeed grew up in Mali in very traditionalist families for whom it is not done to divorce, whatever the reason.
And these families continued to pressure the victim to withdraw his complaint.
The victim has since initiated divorce proceedings.
An argument that degenerates into beatings and rape
At the time of the events, Rokia (
the first name has been changed)
had obtained accommodation from the prefecture in Cheptainville with her 7-year-old daughter because of domestic violence by her husband.
But the latter went there regularly, in particular to see his daughter whom he was going to pick up at school, the mother returning too late.
On September 2, he came to sign papers for the start of the school year but got angry because his wife had checked the "separate" box on the documents.
He then began to hit her violently, which was noted by the doctors, before raping her.
Awakened by Rokia's cries in the middle of the night, a neighbor had called the gendarmes.
These had intervened.
The victim, barely dressed, opened the door for them and broke down, telling them that she had just been beaten and raped by her husband.
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The defendant's lawyer, Maître Raoul Briolin fils did not, unlike his client, dispute the violence.
But he pleaded doubt about the existence of the rape, its materiality not being established.
“Justice is human, all human, nothing but human,” he said, quoting Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
His client had been sentenced to ten years in prison in 2006 for two rapes committed two years earlier.
There too, he had denied the facts.
Just like the sexual assault on a minor which had earned him five years in prison in 2007 for acts of 2003. Eight other convictions for forgery and use of forgery, concealed work and for numerous scams, also earned him other passages in prison.
