Prosecuted for pimping, the Parisian magistrate judged last November in Nanterre is definitively cleared. This Monday, May 15, the Versailles Court of Appeal pronounced the release of this 60-year-old man. As the Nanterre Criminal Court had done in its judgment on November 15, 2022. Contrary to what the prosecution then claimed, in a demonstration, it must be said, quite wobbly.
The story, which led this magistrate to police custody and then to his colleagues, began in 2017, when he met, via a website, a young Gabonese woman who had recently arrived in France. To get by, the one who is only 19 sells her charms. It is in this context that the two meet.
A few months later, she is pregnant and then moves in with the magistrate, who did not wish to have children. She interrupts her activity as a prostitute, her companion provides for her needs and pays her a total of around 200,000 euros by transfer. He even finances the acquisition of a house in Gabon.
Custody, indictment, trial…
But shortly after the birth of the child, at the beginning of the year 2018, the young woman resumed her activities. What he discovers when he comes across a bag of erotic clothes in the apartment. Regularly, she disappears to exercise ten or fifteen days a month in the provinces, while he takes care of the newborn.
The situation becomes unbearable, to the point that he kicks her out at the end of 2019. When he realizes that she has returned to the accommodation without her knowledge, he files a handrail at the police station. And she also goes to see the police to file a complaint accusing him of having forced her into prostitution.
The justice he knows well has been set in motion. He was taken into custody and then charged, before being sent back to the criminal court. For the representative of the prosecution at the trial in Nanterre, giving money to this young woman, “while he was aware that it favored the prostitution activity of Madame”, makes him a pimp. Just like babysitting when she went on a trip.
Arguments, which had ulcerated the magistrate’s lawyer, Me Pierre de Combles de Nayves. “To say that there is pimping for a father who takes care of his son is unworthy! “, he pleaded.
A relationship that cost him dearly
“The indignity” less, the judges of Nanterre made the same analysis to relax him: “It cannot be reasonably reproached” to the defendant for having kept “this baby who had to be kept since his mother had left prostitute in the provinces”. The court also noted that the relationship with this woman cost him dearly and that it is “in no way demonstrated” that the money and the gifts would have been a way of spoiling her to let her engage in prostitution.
But the prosecution considered that the release was not justified and appealed. The magistrate therefore recounted his story in front of his colleagues, at Versailles this time. There, the public prosecutor’s office clearly did not read the file in the same way and himself asked for release. The acquittal decision was rendered on Monday, May 15. The magistrate can breathe.