Held for killing stepfather-turned-husband after decades of abuse, French woman set free

Valerie Bacot (40), a French mother of four, shot her stepfather Daniel Polette, who had later married her and forced her into prostitution, dead in 2016.

A French mother of four was sentenced to one year in prison Friday for killing her husband after decades of sexual, physical and psychological abuse starting when she was an adolescent. The verdict allows her to walk free, as she has already served time in preventive detention. The case had drawn broad attention and support for the defendant amid a national reckoning with long-held taboos around domestic abuse.