Sophie’s mother: I have betrayed her for 16 years
Marguerite Bouniol’s book, L’affaire Sophie Toscan du Plantier, Un Déni de Justice (a denial of justice) — went on sale in France yesterday and details how she constantly tried to highlight the case, and in doing so betrayed her daughter’s lifetime wish for privacy.
“At each new development… I was obliged to betray my daughter. Married to a public man [film producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier], Sophie avoided journalists. For 16 years I have broken this rule which she imposed. I said and cried her name so that no one would forget her, but always the silence descends again.
“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,”
The 39-year-old mother-of-one, who was also a film producer, was beaten to death outside her holiday home near Toormore, Schull, Co Cork, in 1996.
In the 192-page book, Sophie’s mother, who is her 80s, said: “I had been slow to understand that neither Sophie nor the suspect were what were at stake in this story, and that the murder of Sophie was the source of a conflict between the Irish police and the Irish justice system and between the Irish justice system and our justice system.”
Ms Bouniol said that concerned her. “What consideration then to my daughter? What consideration then for the truth? And who fights for her?”
However, she has acknowledged the support she and her husband, Georges, have received from many people in Ireland.
She said up to the time of her daughter’s killing, she was unaware of violence or hatred and was “haunted by the thought of the last thing Sophie saw”.
No one has ever been charged with her murder.
Ian Bailey, who was questioned by gardaí and who has always denied any involvement in her death, successfully fought an application to have him extradited to France where authorities wanted to question him.
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