A young woman residing in Garges-lès-Gonesse, a popular city north of Paris, accused at a press conference Monday a police officer who pushed her “violently” against a wall to be responsible for her miscarriage, intervened ten days later.
After a first complaint in December, Deborah and her lawyer lodged a new complaint last week with the constitution of a civil party for “violence by a person holding public authority having resulted in permanent mutilation”. They are awaiting the appointment of an investigating judge and new investigative acts.
Non-wearing of the mask
On December 10 at the end of the afternoon, this young woman of 23, four and a half months pregnant, is in a shopping center in Garges-lès-Gonesse (Val-d’Oise) accompanied by her cousin of 22 years. Police officers on patrol ask the two women to put on the mask.
“We said yes right away,” says Deborah, explaining that the policewoman decides despite everything to issue them. When leaving the place, “we were in conversation with my cousin. She (the policewoman) came back to us running and grabbed my cousin’s wrist” in order to question her for “contempt”, affirms Deborah. Then she “grabbed me by the arm, pushed me against the wall three times violently,” continues the young woman, who says she then repeated that she was pregnant. Deborah also accuses the policewoman of having “shaken” her to ask her to apologize.
IGPN investigation
At the end of their custody, the two women were summoned to court in July for insulting a person holding public authority, according to a source close to the investigation. “During the night I started to feel pains” which will turn out to be contractions, recalls the young woman, moved.
After several medical consultations, and a temporary incapacity for work (ITT) of eight days, she was urgently hospitalized two days after the incident and gave birth on December 21 to a stillborn baby girl. “I feel an injustice, I lost my daughter,” she whispers in a barely audible voice.
“An investigation is entrusted to the IGPN to determine precisely the circumstances of the arrest denounced by the young woman”, had specified in early January the prosecution of Pontoise. Contacted again on Monday, the prosecution did not follow up in the immediate.
“All of this leads us to consider that there is a causal link between the police intervention and the loss of Deborah’s child,” declared his counsel, Me Vincent Brenghart. “To my knowledge, this is the first time that we are confronted with a case of police violence likely to have resulted in the death of a child,” he said.
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