To accelerate business treatment, dedicated audiences are held every week at the Orleans courthouse

Every Monday morning, a special hearing opens in this jurisdiction. The defendants are all judged for intra -family violence. Two objectives: reduce deadlines and better understand these cases.

If specialized poles, with trained magistrates, have emerged in early 2024, some jurisdictions are now further. In Orleans, where domestic violence has jumped 10% each year for five years, hearings have been exclusively devoted to them since 2025. If these special audiences are deployed everywhere in France, this jurisdiction of Orleans is one of the few to have established them every Monday morning, at 9 a.m.

In appearance, it is a banal courtroom: a prosecutor, magistrates, lawyers. Except that all defendants are judged for intra -family violence (violence on children, domestic violence). Among them, Cécilia’s ex-spouse whom she accuses of repeated violence. “”I was looking forward to this trial oddly because the wait is hard, too hard“, She explains. However, he will have to wait for a month again because the trial is returned. A month, a short delay that this new system allows.

“My lawyer told me that it was lucky that it was postponed only in Apriltells Cécilia, Because normally, you have to wait at least a year.“The Orleans prosecution has set itself the objective of processing six files by specialized audience, with the aim of reducing the processing time for files. The former companion of Mélanie is sentenced, during a special hearing, at eight months suspended prison for having harassed and threatened with death.

“I find that it is good that there are specific slots. Because if everything is taken very early, I think things can be avoided.”

Mélanie, whose ex-companion was sentenced

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Mélanie had been waiting for this decision for a year, since her last complaint filed in February 2024. “It’s long when you don’t know what’s going on in the head of the other personshe testifies. Living on a daily basis with someone who harasses you, who follows you everywhere, who threatens you. It’s scary to go out in the evening and not know if we will come home. “

The former spouse of Mélanie made the hundred steps in front of the room. He is annoyed, because he finds that his file has been shipped. “”We see that the files are processed much fasterattests Catherine Valsadia, the lawyer of the former spouse. Because we are on the same patterns each time “. According to her, gathering on the same bench defendants for the same facts is not a good idea: “Even if the stories are different, I think that at the level of the defendant it can change his vision. He sees a number of files scrolling with different stories. He often has the impression of being ‘violent man’, purely and simply, without his history being taken into consideration.“

During these hearings, victims like Mélanie or Cécilia can benefit from two supporters. That of the dog, Suki, a Golden Retriever, and his Mistress Violette Humbert of the France Victims 45 association. “It is a moral support above all, we do not do muchsays Violette Humbert. It also allows you to block between the victim and the respondent who can be intimidating by the gaze “. Suki goes to bed on the bench, even goes to the bar alongside the victims.

In this room, magistrates and prosecutors all belong to the intra -family violence pole created in early 2024 in each jurisdiction. For the lawyer Clémence Lemarchand, who defends Cécilia and Mélanie, this fluidifies the audience.

“Now, we systematically have a specialized prosecutor of the material who knows everything that comes from psychology, which is used to reading specific medical certificates in terms of domestic violence. This brings technicality and specialization on the side of the prosecution.”

Lawyer Clémence Lemarchand

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Not all files of domestic violence will not be able to benefit from these special hearings at the moment. In the absence of means, some will have to follow a more classic, longer correctional audience route. In this jurisdiction where one in three files is a matter of domestic violence, the prosecutor of Orleans, Emmanuelle Bochenel-Puren, wants to go further. “”The absolute wish that one could have is that all the files are actually judged in these termsshe hopes. I think we are not there yet. But it is a significant step that for me is engaged.“

The Ministry of Justice intends to accelerate the deployment of these specialized audiences throughout France.