During a signing session at the A la page bookstore in Besançon, Randall Schwerdorffer, Jonathann Daval’s lawyer, was taken to task by feminists. They criticize the lawyer for his refusal to use the term feminicide for the murder of Alexia Daval.
Crime of passion or feminicide? A generational, semantic, cultural gap separates these two words which each qualify a drama: the murder or assassination of a wife, of a companion by the man she lived or had lived.
Jonathann Daval’s lawyer, sentenced in 2020 to 25 years’ imprisonment for the murder of his wife Alexia, has always affirmed his refusal to use the term feminicide. “I see the concept, I don’t like it. Crime of passion exists. I refuse to use this ridiculous term” he explained this Saturday, October 15, sitting next to journalist Pierre Laurent in the Besançon bookstore On page. The lawyer has just published his interviews with Pierre Laurent entitled Assize trial. A lawyer on the witness stand.
In this book, Randall Schwerdorffer looks back on “toxic impact” of the #MeToo movement in court cases. “We are in the sacralization of a word, believes the lawyer. This poses a difficulty. We must first seek the truth.”
A freedom of tone that ulcerates feminists. Arriving this Saturday morning in front of his bookstore, Hamid Kaighobadi discovers a series of tags on his storefront. A signing session with the lawyer is scheduled for the same afternoon.
It is a little after 3 p.m., barely the first signing is over, a small group of young women in turbans and masks enter the bookstore, determined to disrupt this meeting.
They published and pasted on walls a text explaining why, according to them, “Randall Schwerdorffer’s remarks are “problematic and his coming to the bookstore A la page inappropriate”.
These young women are, they say, “just feminist citizens” without belonging to a particular group. They wanted to intervene because they are fighting against “patriarchal violence” while the lawyer, according to them, “defends them”.
Randall Schwerdorffer’s speech is harmful, dangerous for future generations because it could legitimize violence against women. You can’t romanticize feminicide.
The tone rises, the slogans fuse under the quiet gaze of the few readers who have come for this meeting. Journalist Pierre Laurent lets go of his fed up “It’s unbearable. We don’t force you to do anything. Neither to listen to us, nor to read us. You prevent us from having a meeting with our readers”. Randall Schwerdorffer, unfazed their spear” We don’t care about your nonsense.” Le Bisontin criticizes young women for their “fascist behavior. You arrive masked, where do you think you are?” he launches to the demonstrators.
What I write, I claim. Everything I write I mean it.
A line of conduct that he maintains as a lawyer and co-author of books. A year after the verdict of the Daval trial, the lawyer from Besançon had published the book “I wanted her to shut up”, co-written with Frédéric Gilbert. In Besançon, the signing session, scheduled for November 2021, at the L’intranquille bookstore had been canceled following a press release from the association Osez le féminisme! 25
This book is an insult to all victims of feminicides, to all women victims of domestic violence and to their loved ones.
Dare feminism! 25Press release of November 14, 2021
The young women left as quickly as they had arrived. The autograph session resumes. Without having been able to initiate the slightest dialogue, the opinions of each other are so diametrically opposed.
