PORTRAIT. Me Béatrice Zavarro defends Dominique Pelicot: “I want him to reveal all his secrets” explains the Marseille lawyer

Me Béatrice Zavarro, with her red glasses, stands out as the other female character in this legal drama. MIDI LIBRE – François Barrère

At his side since March 2021, Me Béatrice Zavarro stands out at the hearing by accompanying her client who claims not to want to hide anything about the acts he committed and had committed against his wife, Gisèle Pelicot. 

She is as tall as three apples and defends one of the biggest sex criminals arrested in France in the 21st century. “I am 1.50 m tall when I take this case, I fracture eight vertebrae during the investigation, and today I am 1.45 m and weigh 42 kg” smiles Me Béatrice Zavarro, this Marseille lawyer, who pleaded oath in 1996 after a radical change taken during her studies.

Everything changes during an internship at Baumettes

"At first, I wanted to be a judge, I had no tolerance for delinquents, and I couldn't imagine that prisoners could have a television in their cell." Everything changed during an internship, in the fifth year of law, at the Baumettes prison. “I see people deprived of their freedom, with a life experience behind them, I have a lot of empathy for them and I tell myself that my place is on the side of the defense.” 

Because she “is dying for the criminal justice system”, she works shifts at the Bishop's Palace, the central police station in Marseille. “I spend my nights there, even though I'm small and I don't have a voice that carries, which the incarcerated Marseille macho does not appreciate.  “

The assassination of MP Yann Piat and the Christine Deviers-Joncour affair 

 She nevertheless created her reputation there, helped “by a big thug who trusts me absolutely and lets me into all his affairs.” She finds herself in the case of the assassination of the deputy Yann Piat, in Draguignan, in that of the scheming Christine Deviers-Joncour, the ex-mistress of Roland Dumas, who nicknamed herself “the whore of the Republic”.

“She was prosecuted for ABS, abuse of corporate assets, I pleaded abuse of benevolence sentimental."  Dominique Pelicot approaches him in March 2021, "on the advice of a guy in the Baumettes playground. I go to meet him, he doesn't hide anything from me about what he is accused of, I think for 30 seconds and accept, without suspecting the media impact."

"A 72-year-old man who needs me"

 Three years later, she faces this pressure without flinching. "I know that it has a beginning and an end, and that it's not because the cameras are watching me that I'm a great lawyer." She remains lucid in front of her client: "I see his extraordinary dimension, but when I look at Dominique Pelicot, I see a 72-year-old man who needs me. That doesn't mean that what he did isn't serious. But we have to be a team, we move forward together."

 The stakes of the trial are not the verdict for her: "I expect Madame Pelicot to come out of it feeling calm. I want him to tell her all his secrets, and to enlighten her on the reasons why we have come to this."

An attitude that carries: on the first day of the hearing, the two women shook hands, warmly.

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