Patrick Bottero is being prosecuted for humiliation and violent gestures, facts denounced by his partner in 2019, while he was stationed in Nîmes as vice-prosecutor. He was tried in criminal proceedings on Monday in Lyon, where the case was relocated. His colleagues requested a six-month suspended prison sentence against him.
The 42-year-old magistrate was indicted in April 2021 for facts dating back to 2019, when he was vice-prosecutor in Nîmes in Gard: he is suspected of violence against his former partner, accusations that he still has contested.
Monday September 11, 2023, this professional magistrate therefore found himself before the Rhône justice system, on the dock: Patrick Bottero, 42, was on trial for “violence by a spouse” before the Lyon judicial court.
The facts allegedly took place between September and December 2019, when he was a deputy prosecutor at the Nîmes public prosecutor’s office.
It is his ex-partner, a young woman of 25 years old met during his internship at the Gard courthouse, who accuses him.
According to our colleagues from the newspaper The worldshe detailed ten scenes of violence at the bar, speaking of slaps or pinched breasts, including an episode on the prosecution, and described “authoritarianism, insults and humiliations suffered in the privacy of one’s relationship“.
It was Le Canard Enchaîné who revealed this affair in 2021 in an article entitled “Balance ton Proc”, explaining that his previous partner had already filed several complaints for violence, all of which were dismissed by the Nîmes public prosecutor’s office.
The lawyer for the new plaintiff, Olivier Morice, had to ““to fight hard to have the case moved to another jurisdiction.”
For his part, Patrick Bottero admitted to having multiplied his female conquests in the legal sector where he maintained several simultaneous affairs.
According to Le Monde, he explained on the stand that it was jealousy which pushed the young woman to make what he claims were false accusations and refuted any violence against her at the hearing.
“What was striking at the hearing” says Master Morice by telephone, “it was then that Patrick Bottero had admitted to a number of facts in police custody, this Monday in the bar, he displayed a total denial. His goal is obviously to avoid a court convicting him because this could have significant consequences on his career as a magistrate.”
According to the young woman’s lawyer, the psychological expertise described a man “of all power, who cannot stand frustration, who sees women as an object to be consumed and who does not respect her as a person.
This magistrate, transferred to Marseille, was not suspended by the higher council of the judiciary, despite the request of his superiors in Gard. His lawyer, for her part, has not yet responded to our request for an interview.
The Lyon prosecutor’s office requested six months of imprisonment and a citizenship training course. The judgment was reserved until October 2.
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