Petite and worried at the helm, Sophie; Parisian setting; recounts his two years of married life with Fabien R. This 44-year-old police officer from the anti-narcotics office is on trial, Tuesday August 30, before the Paris Criminal Court for willful violence on his ex-companion between 2019 and 2021. This 41-year-old Parisian, says she has endured two years of nightmare, aggravated according to her by the profession exercised by this man.
While the judge shows the photo of one of her quarters, Sophie remembers the blows in the face with a shoe, that day when he hit her against the bathtub, pushed into a ditch or pulled her by the hair. She also talks about a dozen strangulations where she feared for her life. The reasons: she has no oil in her cupboards, she fell asleep in front of the TV, she didn’t take her train tickets, she has doubts about her fidelity.
In police custody, Fabien R denied most of the charges. There, at the bar, he recognizes them. It must be said that the judge exhumes the unequivocal text messages in which he apologized for his violence the day before. “My knuckles hurt, sorry I’m a rot forgive me”, he writes for example. In the same way, confronted with photos taken by the victim, he admits to being responsible for certain marks on his face, in particular a bruise in the eye. But he says it was his elbow that unintentionally hit her and left that mark. On the other hand, he does not recognize the dozen strangulations of which his ex-companion complains. He says his hands “have slipped” as they exchanged “reciprocal blows” and that only happened once. He also doesn’t recognize punches.
“I admit unacceptable and inadmissible violence that could have been avoided if I had seen a shrink earlier or if I had left her, but I believed in our story.”
Fabian R.at the Paris Criminal Court
Before accusing his ex-girlfriend of being “became a disease of jealousy” : “It’s hard to receive messages of jealousy every day on your phone and it was shouting after shouting matches. I reacted with inappropriate gestures”he says, before qualifying them as “serious”. The expert psychologist who analyzed the plaintiff nevertheless concluded that she had never been pathologically jealous before, that she had no psychological pathology or tendency to exaggeration, or tendency to over-victimize herself.
Sophie describes her former police spouse as a perverted manipulator. She speaks of insults, humiliations, punches and a dozen strangulations. For a long time, she was afraid to file a complaint because of the suspect’s profession, but she finally dared at the beginning of 2022, after the death of Amanda Glain under the blows of Arnaud B., also a police officer.
In court, she recounts Fabien R.’s suicide threats with his service weapon if she left him, the police officer’s threats to the custody of his daughter. In tears, she recounts the fear of being killed that still follows her today, more than a year after their separation. “If he hadn’t been a police officer, I would have filed a complaint sooner, but I was afraidconfides the forty-year-old with a wavering voice. He threatened to have my custody taken away from me, and then there was his gun that he brought home every night.”.
“I was afraid of his reaction if I went to see a doctor or told relatives about it.”
Sophiaat the Paris Criminal Court
“One dayshe adds, neighbors called the police because of the noises. He told the crew that moved there was no problem he was a colleague, they left.”
She ends up leaving him and then filing a complaint encouraged by another police officer in whom she confides while filing a complaint for the theft of her laptop. Main request of the victim still frozen in his fears: that a ban on carrying a weapon be pronounced against his ex. Today under judicial control, the anti-narcotics policeman still has one, even if he is asked by his superiors not to take it with him out of service. The prosecutor speaks of a disturbing personality and recalls that Fabien R. was also given a six-month suspended prison sentence for police violence three years ago. He is asking for an 18 month suspended sentence. The judge will deliver her decision on December 6.