Valérie Bacot was just 12 when her stepfather began raping her. After a stint in prison for abusing her, he returned to the family home and resumed the rapes, she said. The two eventually settled together, for what Bacot said were 18 years of repeated beatings, sexual assaults and forced prostitution.

“At first it was slaps, then kicks, punches and he would strangle me,” Bacot, a frail 40-year-old woman, told a French court in emotional testimony this week, recounting how she was “afraid to die every day”.

Until the day she killed Daniel Polette, her former stepfather who became her husband.

On Friday, a court sentenced Bacot to a four-year prison term, with three years suspended, meaning she would not face further incarceration since she has already served one year in prison.

“This means, madam, that you will leave this court free,” a judge told Bacot, as her family sitting behind her burst into tears and applauded the decision.

The court’s ruling, which considered the murder premeditated but also acknowledged that Bacot’s judgement had been altered by the abuse she suffered, could set a powerful precedent in France, where domestic violence is a chronic problem.

For five days, the wood-panelled courtroom in Chalon-sur-Saône, a quiet town in France’s central Burgundy region, was the scene of chilling accounts detailing the many flaws that led to tragedy. The court heard of the psychological grip that Polette had over his stepdaughter, then wife; the authorities’ inaction; and silence from relatives — all of which raised an uncomfortable question: Who was the real victim in this case? Polette, the murdered abuser, or Bacot, the abused murderer?

Bacot recounted her story in a book published last month, Tout le monde savait (Everyone Knew), which detailed the relentless misery of her life. When she was 12, Polette became the partner of her divorced mother and soon coerced the daughter into sex. He was jailed for sexual assault against Bacot, but was allowed to return to the family home after three years in prison and resumed the abuse, she said, while her mother turned a blind eye.

At age 17, Bacot had a child with Polette and moved in with him. Three more children followed, all living under the grip of an alcoholic and compulsive father who instilled fear in the family and often threatened to kill Bacot, she said. The two were married when Bacot was 27, and Polette was 53.

After a few years, Bacot said Polette forced her into prostitution. For 11 years, he made her have sex with clients in the back of his car, giving her instructions through an earpiece, she said. Bacot’s children told the court they learned about it when they found business cards their father had made, with the words “escort girl” written on them.

Bacot said she knew she had to act after Polette asked their daughter about her budding sexuality, raising fears that he would soon turn on her. On March 13, 2016, after she was raped by a client, Bacot said, she took a pistol her husband had hidden in his car and shot her husband in the back of the head.

New York Times News Service