Vice World News: Woman Accused of Murdering Stepfather Who Forced Her Into Marriage and Prostitution
Stock photo Melanie Wasser
June 22, 2021
PARIS – A woman is on trial for the murder of her stepfather-turned-husband who she says raped her repeatedly from the age of 12, forced her into marriage and to bear four children, and later pimped her into prostitution out of the back of the family car.
It’s a case that has horrified France and captured national media attention for the shocking levels of violence and abuse that Valérie Bacot, 40, says she endured at the hands of Daniel Polette.
This week Bacot is appearing at Chalon-sur-Saone courthouse in Burgundy, where for five days she will relive the 25 years she lived in terror as a victim of rape, physical abuse and pyschological torture – and the moment she shot Polette in the back of the head on the 13th of March, 2016.
It’s not the first time Bacot will have shared with the world the disturbing details of her private hell: Last month she published her memoir Everybody Knew, in advance of her trial.
