(Toulon) After eleven years on the run with her daughter and her extradition from Switzerland this summer, a mother was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday by French justice, for abduction and non-presentation of a child and slanderous denunciation against her ex-husband.
Posted at 12:27 p.m.
Priscillia Majani, 48, was sentenced by the Toulon Criminal Court (south-eastern France) to the same sentences pronounced against her in 2015 and 2016, while she was on the run, i.e. two years in prison for slanderous denunciation and three years in prison with deprivation of civic and parental rights for non-representation of her child.
These two penalties, which relate to two separate cases, can be combined.
In his indictment, the representative of the public prosecutor’s office, Dominique Mirkovic, had called for the conviction of “a manipulative mother, who hatched a plot against the father”, dismissing the defense thesis of “a simply worried mother, who tried to protect her child.
Mme Majani had disappeared with her five-year-old daughter in 2011, in the context of a strong “marital conflict”, recognized by all parties, around the custody of the child, after accusing the father of rape and sexual assault on their daughter. This complaint had been closed without follow-up.
The defendant had finally been extradited in August from Switzerland, where she had been arrested a few months earlier after a banal traffic check. She had explained that she had hidden there for six to seven years, after having resided in “different countries”.
“My daughter is the victim and I will continue to say that. I am not responsible, ”reaffirmed Mme Majani in reaction to the judgment.
The hearing lasted nearly five hours on Friday, in a tense context between the defendant and her defense and the president of the court, while several people showed their support for Mr.me Majani in front of the courthouse.
The father, a civil party, declared that he could not “help think that (his) daughter is finished”, because “alienated by her mother”. The teenager, now 16, is in the custody of the Swiss authorities and refuses any contact with her father.
The court awarded the father 25,000 euros (CAN$33,000) in compensation for the harm suffered and 1,500 euros (CAN$1,994) for the costs incurred.
The advice of M.me Majani maintained during their argument that their client’s place was “with her daughter in Switzerland”.