The trial of Valérie Bacot
The French Government want to “restore trust in justice” with new legislation that will introduce a range of reforms to France’s criminal justice system. But, as the recent trial of Valérie Bacot shows, much greater structural reform is needed.
Last month, a jury found Valérie Bacot guilty of killing the man who subjected her to decades of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Daniel Polette, Bacot’s stepfather, began raping her when she was 12 years old, resulting in a pregnancy when she was 17. He groomed her into becoming his wife and subjected her to commercial sexual exploitation. Following a violent sexual encounter that he had forced her into, she eventually shot him dead to protect her teenage daughter from suffering the same abuse.
Bacot was sentenced to four years in prison, three of them suspended. As she had already spent one year in detention, she ‘walked free’ — which some celebrated as a victory, and others considered shockingly lenient. Her two teenage boys, who helped bury the body, were also given six-month suspended sentences.
Women like Bacot are asked to trust ‘the system’ to deliver justice. In this case, the system dealt with the rape of a child by a family member by incarcerating the perpetrator, who was then allowed to return home after serving his sentence. The same system allowed this rapist to marry his victim and continue abusing her for 25 years. The system turned a blind eye to complaints of domestic violence brought by children who witnessed their mother suffering abuse. The system deprived Bacot of liberty for a whole year for defending herself, although it had never stepped in to protect her beforehand. The system cynically expects Valérie to be happy with the outcome of her trial; and then moves on with business as usual.
Can we call this justice?
The French Government has recognised that it must “restore trust in justice” by reforming its criminal legal system. In May, the French Parliament adopted on first reading, new legislation that contains a wide range of reforms on issues from pre-trial detention to sentencing. But the new law, which has been rushed through parliament without the involvement of civil society, has been criticised for not going far enough. While the Bacot case may seem exceptional, it illustrates why much deeper structural reforms are needed.
Bacot entered the criminal legal system as a suspect of murder and found the law was not on her side. The concept of self-defence fails to consider the situation of a woman who lived under the control and fear of a man for decades, and one day shot him to protect herself and her family.
She spent an entire year in pre-trial detention, forced to leave her four children, despite the traumatic situation they were going through as a family. This is not unusual. As Fair Trials recently reported, pre-trial detention rates keep rising all over Europe. In France, the number of pre-trial detainees rose from 18,158 in 2016 to 23,324 in March 2020 and was at 20,213 in December 2020 even in the context of the announced ‘wave of releases’ amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This is fuelling an overcrowding crisis in French prisons, which is in turn causing a deterioration of prison conditions, which have widely been condemned as inhumane and degrading, and in violation of fundamental rights.
Depriving someone of their liberty while they wait for the judgment on their guilt or innocence in a criminal case is one of the harshest decisions a criminal justice system can take. Therefore, pre-trial detention should only be used as a measure of last resort when, after a thorough individual assessment, it is deemed necessary, proportionate and in compliance with the presumption of innocence and the right to liberty. However, all too often judges continue to rely instead on vague justifications for pre-trial detention orders that uphold stereotypes, ultimately targeting disproportionately marginalized groups that include racialized, poor, and undocumented people. If people are being unnecessarily placed in pre-trial detention, this indicates a failure of the mechanisms in place to uphold the rule of law and protect individuals from the excessive use of state power. There is little in these latest proposals to address this. The French Government have missed an opportunity to overhaul and restrict the use of pre-trial detention and find alternative ways to deal with people who are accused but not convicted of crimes.
It has still not been publicly reported why Valerie Bacot was held in detention before her trial. French law (Article 144 of the criminal procedure code) sets out a series of legal grounds that could justify such a decision. One of these is the ‘risk to public order’ because of the severity of an offence, although the law specifies that pre-trial detention cannot be based on this ground solely because of the media interest in the case. The Government’s proposed reforms to pre-trial detention, would keep ‘risk to public order’ as grounds for pre-trial detention, even though it is so vague and imprecise, that it is open to abusive and excessive use. The European Court of Human Rights has indicated that such a ground should only be used exceptionally and if based on facts that show a real threat to public order.
Prior to Bacot’s verdict, the prosecutor said they were not looking to send her to jail, but they went ahead and asked for a four-year sentence. This appears to be an example of the criminal justice system retrospectively justifying its decisions — in this case, the decision that led to Bacot spending a year behind bars.
Fair Trials’ research has demonstrated that people detained pre-trial are more likely to be sentenced to a prison term, and for longer lengths of time compared with others facing similar charges. Reducing the excessive use of pre-trial detention is an important step in reducing onward criminality and incarceration levels. While the French Government has proposed that accused people should not be held for more than eight months in pre-trial detention, the plans allow workarounds that mean that this limit is largely meaningless.
Many States need to face up to the widely documented evidence that places of detention are dangerous. According to the World Health Organisation, a shocking 25% of prisoners are victimized by violence each year. When states detain people, they have a legal and moral responsibility to ensure their safety. Now it is time for Member States to take up the lead. As France is due to take over the Presidency of the EU in 2021, we reiterate the call from civil society in France that authorities must urgently act on prison violence.
But Valerie Bacot was not just a victim of individual abuse, but also a victim of systemic violence. This remains a huge blind spot in legislation and policymaking. Gender-based and domestic violence are structural issues that individual punishment cannot and will not solve. Prison as the one size fits all response to societal harms is missing the point and, as Valerie’s story shows us, failing everyone. There is concrete evidence that criminal legal systems rooted in patriarchy will invariably fail the very women they are meant to protect. In Mexico for instance, Intersecta has been documenting how femicide laws have actually led to an increase in women being prosecuted and imprisoned.
Yet in the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025, the European Commission continues to operate within the fiction of a strict dichotomy between victims and perpetrators, and further focuses on individual, rather than structural, harm. It is high time we questioned ‘easy fix’ punitive solutions that do nothing to prevent or repair harm, and instead perpetuate cycles of violence and injustice. Our criminal legal systems are ill-equipped to deal with marginalised people, like Bacot, who do not easily fall into the categories of victim or suspect.
We also need a more comprehensive approach to supporting and protecting victims of domestic abuse and gender-based violence, which includes more restorative justice alongside meaningful engagement with impacted people, to find ways to prevent and address societal harm.
Without deeper structural reform, the system will continue to fail women like Bacot.
