“To say that justice is not doing its job and that nothing is changing is very unfair”.
The Rennes prosecutor justified Tuesday the dismissal of a complaint filed in September by Magali Blandin against her husband, who confessed to having killed her with a baseball bat.
The murder of this 42-year-old woman in Ille-et-Vilaine caused a stir in public opinion and several political leaders and associations have pointed the finger at justice.
“The couple had just split up.
She was killed with a baseball bat.
Baseball bat.
She had filed a complaint for violence.
The complaint was dismissed.
In fact, nothing changes.
It is despairing and revolting ”, wrote on Twitter Laurence Rossignol, socialist senator and former minister.
“Stop violence against women.
Fright and despair for Magali Blandin mother of four children, massacred by her husband.
She had filed a complaint for domestic violence.
The complaint was closed, it's revolting, ”said Ségolène Royal, former minister and“ finalist ”in the presidential election, on the same social network.
Feminist activist Caroline De Haas also questioned the prosecution in a tweet.
“Magali Blandin had lodged a complaint in September against her ex-husband.
Closed without follow-up.
He murdered her in February […] ”.
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Murder of Magali Blandin: chronology of an "extraordinary" affair
The Rennes prosecutor, Philippe Astruc, who says he does not want to "argue with anyone", however wished to explain the reasons for the classification of this complaint on September 4.
"There was a legal response but that did not go through a prosecution," he said.
VIDEO.
Disappearance of Magali Blandin: "Jérôme Gaillard explained in police custody having killed his wife"
In the summer of 2020, Magali Blandin, a specialist educator, announces to her husband that she is going to take a personal bank account, a decision that tends to strain relations in this couple who has four children and who married in 2003 after having married. to be met in 1996. On the evening of September 2, during a heated discussion, "she says he lifts the bench and that she falls on her buttocks back" and decides to leave the home.
The next day, she files a complaint with the Montauban-de-Bretagne brigade and the husband, who has no criminal record for violence, is placed in police custody, while the four parents of the couple will be heard.
"The choice of social support"
Magali Blandin “passes the protocol, goes to the forensic institute.
A medical certificate does not note any physical lesions but evokes a significant tachycardia ”, linked to stress, explains Mr. Astruc.
"She also evokes the facts in 2005, 2013, 2019, 2020 and the authoritarian character of her husband, and says:
generally, the violence, it is more pushing, insults of all kinds, denigration
".
The husband, who acknowledges having lifted the bench, "says he is the victim of physical violence from his wife, which Ms. Blandin recognizes and what in civil proceedings, the children will confirm."
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Also, the magistrate, who decides on the classification, considers that "the intensity of this fact does not justify a referral to the criminal court".
“Given an egalitarian approach to the law […], it would naturally have been necessary to prosecute Ms. Blandin for the violence, recognized, that she may have exerted on her husband,” said Mr. Astruc.
“The choice that was made was rather to set up social support,” explains Mr. Astruc, with an interview with a psychologist, contact with two victim support associations and support for the social worker in the gendarmerie.
"I made my examination of conscience and that is why this decision was taken and that I take responsibility for it", said the prosecutor, stressing that 1,414 complaints for domestic violence in 2020, against 720 in 2018, were processed at the Rennes court, with 330 deferrals in 2020 against 100 two years earlier.
Magali Bandin's funeral is scheduled for Thursday in the church of Bain-de-Bretagne, France Bleu said on Tuesday.