At the helm of the North Assize Court, they succeed one another to testify, upright and dignified.
None has a glance towards the box, towards these young men accused of having caused the tragedy which swept away their existence and of which two deny the "aggravated murder attempt" with which they are accused.
For Fabien Lherbier, 47 years old, his wife Cathy, 48 years old, and their three children Sofian, Meliana and Myleidi, 27, 25 and 18 years old, there is the life before the attack and then the one after.
"Thursday May 28, 2015, the day everything changed, for you Fabien, so that we never forget", wrote her sister-in-law Aurore on the first page of the first of the three large notebooks where she recorded, then that he was in a coma, their daily life suspended.
From his life before, Fabien Lherbier, helped by the president's questions, only manages to say that she was "very balanced" and her "united family".
Badly beaten in a small city of Libercourt (Pas-de-Calais) while looking for his dogs, burned over 20% of his body and left for dead further in a field, this interim crane operator called upon on all construction sites people in the area got up at 4 am every morning to go for a run before going to work.
The heavy head trauma suffered erased everything.
"You didn't even remember you were married, did you come back?"
"You didn't even remember that you were married," says the Advocate General, "has it come back?"
"Easy," he replies.
"You have been living with this procedure for six years", underlines one of his lawyers, Me Damien Legrand.
“I don't live, I survive,” he corrects, confident he feels “appeased” by the trial.
“We met, we started a family very quickly and we raised our children in the right way,” begins his wife, Cathy Lherbier, at the time a bakery saleswoman.
Nineteen years of “a lot of happiness” before it all shattered.
“With my husband, we agreed on everything, we loved each other.
And then one fine day, he was no longer there.
When my children told me:
But mom, the doctors say that Dad is between life and death
, I didn't hear him.
For me, it was not that.
He was going to wake up and say to me:
How are you?
"
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Cathy Lherbier stops working, visits her every day at the CHU - where her husband miraculously survives a deadly fungus that has nestled in the wounds of his burns.
She sinks into depression.
“It's been three months.
Cathy physically breaks down, she is exhausted, ”Aurore writes in her notebook.
After her husband came out of his coma, another seventeen months of hospital care followed.
The return home marks the start of another fight.
Disabled, Fabien Lherbier suffers "from massive attacks of all his cognitive capacities.
"He must relearn to walk, to speak, connects physiotherapy sessions, speech therapy ..." We sold our house, bought another, made improvements.
Even today, I have to cut her nails, I help her to shave… ”, she describes.
"It was no longer my dad, it will no longer be my dad"
Seized with fits of anger due to his head trauma, Fabien Lherbier is no longer the same.
"Fabien groans, he has a fit, he has violent words… I was told that I had to mourn my husband," breathed his wife, moved to tears in front of the court.
"(When he woke up),
it was no longer my dad, it will no longer be my dad," recounts Myleidi in turn, in tears.
Sofian, the eldest, emphasizes: “If I know how to use my hands, I owe it to my father.
I owe him my education, my values, almost everything ... Today, seeing him diminished like this is very complicated ... "
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He who will soon be foreman and whose dream was to "work with
(his)
father", confides: "Now, every time I see a crane, I think about my father and what we could have done together.
He was one of the best.
"" This family has experienced a kind of chaos, testifies a neuropsychologist who followed Fabien Lherbier for two years at their home.
With great hope and strength, they fought to stand up.
They had to reinvent themselves and are still on that path.
"
Of his aggression, Fabien Lherbier has no memory except "a smell of earth".
He would like the trial to help him "fill the gap" in his memory.
With regard to the accused, neither he nor his family are more angry.
"I would like them to be able to recognize the facts, at least confess", advances only Cathy Lherbier, who says of the only one of the three who did it: "He behaved as a man.
He assumes.
"
In one of the notebooks written for her brother-in-law, Aurore also noted these words: “We could have watered all of Africa with all the tears we have shed from the start.
"