Hi, I’m Kim Kardashian, ”she says.
The voice is instantly recognizable, of course – endless hours consumed by millions, thousands of publications and parodies on social networks. It is, like never, impeccably dressed: a pointed black suit, sparkling jewelry; Possessed, perfectly composed.
But this is not an ordinary public appearance for women famous to be famous. Tuesday, at the courthouse – which houses the highest court in France – Kardashian came to give crucial evidence in a case that revisits the painful crime it endured almost a decade ago; The night when she was linked and gagged, her hands linked to the mouth, her mouth closed, while she was afraid of being raped, pulled and left for death.
Kardashian’s eagerly awaited appearance, she says, the packaged courtroom is “to tell my truth”. It must testify against 10 men – most of them, all with a long criminal record – accused of kidnapping and deprivation of the night of October 3, 2016.
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has died since and another has been apologized due to a disease. The French press nicknamed them Papy robbers – “Grandpa thieves” – but prosecutors insist that they are anything but harmless retirees. All deny allegations.
More than 10 million dollars (7.5 million pounds sterling) of jewelry were stolen during what would be nicknamed “the robbery of the century” – a cheeky attack which took place in the luxury hotel room in Kardashian just before 3 am, during his visit to Paris for Fashion Week.
The crime – as well as its consequences – was brutal. Kardashian said in court that she was held under the threat of a weapon and, fearing sexual assault, began to “say a prayer”. She was naked under her dress. A man pulled his legs towards him on the bed; Another held a gun. “I absolutely thought I was going to die,” she said.
At the beginning, she thought that trampling on the stairs was her sister Kourtney and a friend who came late from an evening. She called – “Hello? Hello? Who is it?” – But no one answered. Then the masked men stormed. Dressed in police, they demanded her jewelry and pointed the diamond ring on her bedside table.
“He said:” Ronnerie! Ring! “And he showed his hand,” recalls Kardashian. They took the ring and chased the rest – a jewelry box worth millions. They zipped his hands and glued his mouth.
Her vulnerability, she explains, came partly from a false feeling of security. “We assumed that if we were in a hotel, it was certain, it was certain,” she said.
‘I was sure they were going to shoot me’
One of the men, she recalls, told her that she would be fine “if I stayed silent”. Another had dragged the concierge into his handcuffed suite. “I thought it was a kind of terrorist attack,” said Kardashian.
“I have babies,” she pleaded. “I have to go home. They can take everything. I just have to go home. “
She was transported to the toilet and locked up inside. She tells the court how she rubbed the band binding her wrists against the sink in order to free herself, then jumped down to find her friend and stylist, Simone Harouche. The pair hid on a balcony, terrified by the attackers would return.
Harouche, who testified earlier in the trial, remembered Kardashian shouting: “I need to live. Take everything. I need to live. ” She locked herself in a bathroom and sent a text to the sister and the Kardashian bodyguard: “Something is wrong.”
Almost immediately after his ordeal, Kardashian was rejected publicly, dehumanized, victim of victim for having created a “plan” for the flight “by his own program” – for having published on his life and where he is online.
“I have never thought in my wildest dreams than to publish something would be an invitation to come to take something,” she said.
At the time, consensus seemed to be that a person as rich as Kim Kardashian was not allowed to complain about being deprived of jewelry; That anyone who has sold his life to the public should expect to be punished for this.
People like Kardashian – Too empty for sympathy, too sexual for seriousness – had, the public seemed to say, inscribed for that.
It may not be necessary to emphasize that it is a hearing unlike most others. The image alone – of the founder of Kardashian Skims, of the attached hands, standing to a fuel under booming ceilings and neoclassical paintings with a golden setting inside the historic court of Paris – curiously surreal.
The media circus also knows this. More than 100 journalists line up outside the court from 6 a.m., cameras failed around the cous, the lanes were tightened closely. The fans bordered the large corridors near the place where the audience is held, also pierced. But it is not the celebrity of Kardashian who makes this trial different – it is the woman behind.
You will undoubtedly have an opinion on Kim Kardashian – even if your opinion is that you don’t want it.
Since 2007, when Follow the Kardashians (or Kuwtk) – A reality show telling the life of Kardashian and his sisters Kourtney and Khloe, and half -sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner – was broadcast for the first time, she was almost a public property. And, more precisely, completely inevitable.
His ascent to glory was dramatic, the fascination for his relentless, and yet “why is Kim Kardashian famous?” There remains one of the most frequently asked questions about it on Google.
Those who admire him say that calling him superficial is missing the point – that the merchant of his life and the sale as a series of assets, is simply a clever matter.
Her weddings – first in Damon Thomas, then to Kris Humphries, and especially in Kanye West in 2014 – only expanded the brilliant and always unpred public story that follows her.
Sometimes it feels like this story followed him to court.
Is it aware of this? No doubt, yes, if her carefully chosen outfit is an indication: a carved black blazer, hair straightened back. It is clear, controlled – not too formal, not too feminine; An act of balancing that many women would recognize.
For the most part, she speaks with composure. “I don’t want to answer because I’m not absolutely certain,” she said more than once. But nothing hides the horror of what she tells. “(It) changed my life and it changed my family’s life,” Kardashian told court.
Her voice sometimes trembles while she speaks, but she remains composed, even by describing the sustainable impact that the attack had on her.
“This experience has really changed everything for us”
Paris, once a sanctuary – the place where she was walking alone at 3 or 4 in the morning, lips, sometimes stopping for hot chocolate – was transformed into a trauma site. “It was always really safe,” she said. “It was always a magical place.”
In the months following the flight, her house in Los Angeles was also targeted, in what she thought was an attempted copy. She is now sleeping with four to six security guards at home. “Without them, I can’t even sleep at night,” she said in court. “This experience has really changed everything for us.”
Although the criticisms of the time accused him of having displayed his wealth – even Karl Lagerfeld suggesting that she had been “too public” – the wave of opinion has changed slowly. Questions about visibility, blame and celebrity prize began to surface. And although his image continued to complicate this story – press equipment would have been issued during the trial which greeted his diamond necklace – Kardashian seemed to recognize the contradictions without starting.
She thanks the French authorities for allowing her to “tell my truth”. While she ends her testimony – the trial is to continue tomorrow without her – her voice is silent but firm.
“It’s my closure,” she said. “It’s me I put that, let’s hope it, to rest.”
