Prosecuted for procuring, the Parisian magistrate tried last November in Nanterre is definitively cleared. This Monday, the Court of Appeal of Versailles pronounced the acquittal of this 60-year-old man. As the Nanterre Criminal Court had done in its judgment on November 15, 2022. Contrary to what the prosecutor then demanded, in a demonstration, it must be said, quite wobbly.
The story, which led this magistrate to police custody and then in front of his colleagues, begins in 2017, when he meets, via a website, a young Gabonese woman who has recently arrived in France. To get by, the one who is only 19 years old sells her charms. It is in this context that the two get to know each other.
A few months later, she was pregnant and moved in with the magistrate, who did not wish to have children. She interrupts her activity as a prostitute, her companion supports her and will pay her a total of about 200,000 euros by transfer. He even financed the acquisition of a house in Gabon.
Police custody, indictment, trial
But shortly after the birth of the child, at the beginning of 2018, the young woman resumed her activities. What he discovers when he comes across a bag of erotic clothes in the apartment. Regularly, she disappears to practice ten or fifteen days in the month in the provinces, while he takes care of the newborn.
The situation becomes unbearable, to the point that he fires her at the end of 2019. When he realizes that she has returned to the apartment without his knowledge, he drops off a handrail at the police station. And she too goes to the police to file a complaint accusing them of forcing her into prostitution.
The justice system he knows well has begun. He was placed in police custody and then indicted, before being referred to the criminal court. For the representative of the prosecution at the trial in Nanterre, giving money to this young woman, "while he was not unaware that it favored the prostitution activity of Madame", makes him a pimp. Just like babysitting the child when she went on a trip.
Arguments, which had ulcerated the lawyer of the magistrate, Me Pierre de Combles de Nayves. "To say that there is pimping for a father who takes care of his son is undignified!" he pleaded.
"The indignity" less, the judges of Nanterre made the same analysis to release him: "It can not reasonably be blamed" the defendant for having kept "this baby that had to be kept since his mother had gone to prostitute herself in the provinces". The court also noted that the relationship with this woman cost her dearly and that it is "in no way demonstrated" that money and gifts would have been a way to spoil her to let her prostitute herself.
But the prosecutor's office considered that the acquittal was not justified and appealed. The magistrate therefore reunfolded his story in front of his colleagues, this time in Versailles. There, the Attorney General's Office clearly did not read the same case and itself asked for the acquittal. The decision to release was rendered on Monday, May 15. The magistrate can blow.
