In Créteil, the trial of a father accused of killing his three daughters in Alfortville

On Monday, the Val-de-Marne Assize Court in Créteil is trying a 43-year-old man until Friday, accused of killing his three daughters in Alfortville in November 2023. He has confessed to the crimes. On November 26, he turned himself in at the Dieppe police station, uttering the chilling words, "I killed my three children," before investigators discovered the bodies of three girls, aged 11, 10, and 4, in the family apartment.

According to information presented at the hearing, the father, who was in the process of divorcing, had spent the weekend with the girls with the mother's consent, then given them sleeping pills. The youngest girl was reportedly suffocated, and the two older girls were stabbed to death. No mental disorder was found to have impaired his judgment, and he faces a life sentence.

The theory of "vicarious violence" is at the heart of the debates.

In the courtroom, both the prosecution and the civil parties focused on a term that has become increasingly prominent in these separation cases in recent years: "vicarious violence." The idea is simple and terrible: to strike a third party, often the child, in order to harm the mother, punish her, and scar her for life. The accused told the police that his wife had "pushed him to the limit," and a psychiatric expert reported that he felt "hatred" for her, particularly after she announced her new relationship.

The mother's lawyer, Patricia Cohn, speaks of a woman "destroyed inside," and for Isabelle Steyer, who represents the association La Voix de l'enfant (The Voice of the Child), the act also aims to instill lasting guilt. Behind the words and concepts, however, remains a stubborn reality: the justice system is judging a man for the tragic loss of three children's lives, and this trial adds political and social pressure to identify, earlier, the violence that arises when a couple breaks down.