“I was in love,” lamented Momo (
the first name has been changed
) behind the window of the box of the Meaux criminal court, this Wednesday.
“Love is neither violence nor harassment,” retorted President Cécile Lemoine.
If the forty-year-old found himself in immediate court, it was for having made 430 phone calls in two days to his ex-girlfriend, leaving her 95 sometimes insulting voice messages, and for having shown up at her home an incalculable number of times.
This is exactly what should not have been done since Momo had been sentenced by the Meldoi judges on January 19, for domestic violence committed in the context of a separation... and he was prohibited from making contact with the victim.
The message obviously did not go down well since on Valentine's Day, the forty-year-old sent him a bottle of champagne and twenty red roses.
Tired and scared, his ex-girlfriend ended up pushing the door of the Chessy police station.
And it was on Monday that the police arrested this resident of Bussy-Saint-Georges.
The prosecution had requested incarceration
Asked about his harassing behavior the day after his conviction, Momo repeated it several times: “I broke down.
This love is too strong, I can’t handle it, I’m sorry, I won’t contact her anymore, I understand.”
Me Estelle Margerie, his lawyer, spoke of his difficulties in getting out of this “destructive love”.
Before emphasizing the ambivalence of his client's former friend: “Certainly, the ban on contact applied to him.
But the victim also contacted him.
She was very happy that he gave her a car, even if for him, it was a way to see her again.
Today, he no longer wants this relationship, he told you that.”
And the defense lawyer suggested a sentence of semi-liberty for this father, who works on a permanent contract and has joint custody of his daughter.
Not at all the analysis of the prosecutor's attorney Myriam Khouas, who requested ten months in prison with a committal warrant, as well as the revocation of four additional months in prison pronounced during a previous conviction.
“We have been in a relationship for six months and we are already at the second correctional hearing.
In October, he was placed under judicial supervision and he had already harassed his ex-partner.
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Referring to the “January warning sentence” accompanied by bans on contact and appearance, the prosecutor recalled: “It was not suggestions, it was a condemnation, and there again, the message did not didn’t pass.”
The judges sentenced him to ten months in prison, to be served on semi-release, for harassment, violation of a ban on appearing and meeting a person despite a judicial ban.