Mannechez case: “She put us in our father’s bed …”, the chilling daily life of a torn family

On the surface, the Mannechez were a completely normal family.. In Saint-Pathus, in Seine-et-Marne, lived an engineer father, a caring housewife and five children. But only in appearance, because once the door closed, horror unfolded. Denis, the father, imposed rapes on his daughters, punishments on his sons, all in front of the eyes of his wife, Laurence. “She had set up a schedule to find out which of me or Virginie, my father’s favorite, came up to my father’s room every evening of the week, tells Betty in the columns of Paris Normandie. She also organized and participated in the rapes. I got pregnant three times, at 13, 15 and 17. It was she who organized the abortions in different hospitals so as not to arouse suspicion. She put us in our father’s bed and, in return, my father let her have her freedom and spend the money without counting the money. We were his currency.”

As teenagers, two of their children, Betty and Virginie, started seeing neighbors their own age. Impossible for Denis, who exiles his family to Oise, more than 100 km away. In the early 2000s, his eldest, whom he had made his wife, became pregnant with him. Betty has decided to flee and recount her years of horror to the gendarmerie. On April 22, 2002, Denis and Laurence Mannechez were arrested and confessed to the atrocities that they have committed on their children. Indicted for incest and complicity in rape, they are imprisoned and sentenced, five years later, to five years in prison, three of which are suspended. Released from prison, Denis Mannechez returned to live with Virginie, a victim of incest and who became the mother of her child. Exhausted, his daughter then decided to settle far from this horrifying father to finally live her life without being under his yoke.

Denis Mannechez died after his conviction

But on October 7, 2014, Denis Mannechez entered the car garage where his daughter works armed. He first killed Frédéric, the young woman’s employer, then his daughter, with a bullet to the head. He then attempted suicide but only seriously injured himself. Judged from December 3 to 19, 2018 for the murder of his 33-year-old daughter and the mechanic, Denis Mannechez was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after his conviction at the age of 56, he succumbed to cardiac arrest. A relief for Betty, author of It was not love: “I want it to serve children still victims of incest; that they see that they can break their chains and have a normal life. But of course, we never forget incest, I keep it the aftermath. I’m quirky, I don’t know the world, Paris. I grew up too fast”.