[Marguerite Bouniol, the mother of murdered Sophie Toscan du Plantier]

This morning, the Irish Times, reports:

Marguerite Bouniol writes in the preface to a new book on the case that her daughter always craved privacy, despite being married to well-known film producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, and that she has had to disregard that wish for privacy to highlight her daughter’s case.

“At each new development . . . I was obliged to betray my daughter. Married to a public man, Sophie avoided journalists.

“For 16 years, I have broken this rule which she imposed. I said and cried her name so that one would not forget her, but always the silence descends again.

“It always descends on me, and around her [Sophie] the obscurity returns.

“I have betrayed this wish of my daughter so that justice would be done to her, in a vain and cruel effort which has led to nothing,” writes Ms Bouniol, who is in her 80s.

….

“Ms Bouniol says she had enjoyed a good, comfortable and peaceful life until her daughter’s murder, but since then she has experienced emotions that run contrary to everything she was ever taught and about which she feels shame.

“Up until then . . . I was unaware of violence until it befell my daughter and I was unaware of hatred before it imposed itself upon me when I was haunted by the thought of the last thing Sophie saw – the mad eyes of a man who smashed a concrete block down on her face.”

Meanwhile, in The Sunday Times last weekend (not online):

A gate.

Mother of Toscan du Plantier writes of frustration over inquiry (Barry Roche, Irish Times)

Pic: LePoint.fr