Au-delà de nos différences
Des coups de gueule, des coups de sang,
À force d'échanger nos silences,
Maintenant qu'on est face à face,
On se ressemble sang pour sang.
I’ve wanted to write this for a long time.
There’s one question I get asked constantly: Where are you from? My usual answer? I’m from Britain. I am British by adoption. My king is His Majesty Charles III, my Prime Minister is Sir Keir Starmer, and even though I’m still in the process of obtaining my citizenship, I have always felt more British than French.
“Oh, but your accent isn’t British, is it?”
And that’s where the justifications begin. I sometimes don’t even bother with justifications. My response is always the same: I was French. I gave back my passport. “Oh.”
Sometimes, I get it: curiosity is natural. I’ve had it too. But you never truly know why someone leaves their country. Sometimes, it’s for work, because they can’t find a job at home. Other times, the reasons run deeper and darker. For many of you, France is the country of the Eiffel Tower, of Parisian cafés with overpriced coffee served by arrogant waiters, a place wrapped in clichés. But for me? Well, let me put it this way:
Russia has a notorious mafia. Alongside its government.
China has their Triads. And their government.
Italy has La Camorra.
Colombia has the cartels. And corruption.
And France? France has its mafia, just as dangerous, just as corrupt. They call it Le Ministère de la Justice. A group of crooks who, under the privilege of being financed by the very government they serve, commit the worst crimes with absolute impunity, more corrupt than any dictator, more untouchable than any cartel leader. A group of crooks who proudly claim to defend l’État de droit, except it’s not a state of law. It’s a state where only the rich and the powerful have rights. A system so rotten that, in a just world, its architects would be hanged high and short. What infuriates me even more is their ability to brainwash the public, to rewrite their crimes, to paint themselves as martyrs when, in reality, they are the worst criminals this country harbours. And if you think France abolished the death penalty in 1981, think again. That's fake news. Because the death penalty, perhaps not in those exact words, still exists in France, hidden behind the smokescreen of corruption, carried out in silence, no matter the damage it inflicts.
So let me explain why I divorced France. And why, the worst thing that could ever happen to you in France is to end up in the hands of their justice.
Oh, and before we begin: this isn’t about French bashing. I respect the French people (as long as they’re not part of this mafia or affiliated with it). France has a fascinating culture that is worth being interested in, and yes, it’s worth visiting. But that’s another conversation that we won't have here. Because, here, I'll explain what France has done to me. And trust me, that won't be in very kind terms.
Our story begins on Monday, February 12, 2018.
It was a cold day. Cold, but not unbearable. After all, it was just another day in Montpellier, a day when my father was in prison, and I woke up at my grandmother’s house, where I had been staying while trying to get back on my feet. That day, still unemployed, with my benefits set to expire (because I couldn’t find a job... because I’m transgender, but 🤫, we’ll get to that funny one later). I had an appointment at 10 o’clock at the local Job Centre. Or Pôle Emploi, for those familiar with it. I heard they rebranded not too long ago. At the same time, not very far away from me, my father. In a prison on the outskirts of Montpellier, woke up. It was a new day for him, a day where he was transferred to a new block. Where he was meant to work, in the kitchen, to clean trays.
My father’s name was Thierry. He was 42 years old, a man who had spent years battling his demons. He suffered from untreated bipolar disorder, not because he refused help but because no doctor ever truly focused on his case. Instead, they dismissed us, gaslighting our family by blaming everything on his drinking problem. A drinking problem that, in reality, wasn’t one; he was not even a regular drinker.
The weekend before, on Friday, February 9, he was sentenced to 12 months in prison. His crime? Driving under the influence of alcohol. Now, I’m not saying that was right; far from it. But the real issue was that this wasn’t his first time. He had prior convictions for the same offence. He had already served two prison sentences for it. So, yes, you might say, he had it coming. But remember the bipolar disorder. Keep that in mind. That period in our lives was pure chaos. It was an earthquake for my family, one that shattered all of us. And I mean all of us. Those who suffer from bipolar disorder know exactly what I’m talking about. (I don’t, but they do.) If left untreated, it can kill you. Like any mental illness, if ignored, dismissed, or left to fester, it will destroy you in one way or another.
About six months earlier, I had returned from Ireland and publicly came out as a transgender woman. It was the most important step of my life, something I had spent years suppressing but could no longer hide. I was 23 years old. But at the same time, my father’s condition was getting worse. He started lying about it. He became paranoid. And then, delusional. Long before I came out, we had already been at odds, mostly because of my manipulative mother (we’ll get to her soon, stay tuned, and if you want to know more, drop a comment). But in those later years, we had begun to rebuild our relationship. His mental illness slowed things down, sure. But when he was stable, when he was in a good phase, we could talk. We could laugh. We could just be.
My father was never a bad person. Far from it. He worked hard, at least when he was able to, and was genuinely loved by those who employed him. His job was unusual, at least not the kind you hear about every day. He was a DJ. To put food on the table, he worked in supermarkets around Montpellier, promoting events with a microphone in hand, roaming the aisles, and entertaining customers. He was an artist, a performer through and through. If you wanted a good time, he was the person to have around. Always cracking jokes, never taking life too seriously, always wearing a smile. Even his employers remembered him for it because when Thierry was working, business was better. People came just to see him. And he was proud of that. And I was proud of him. He was my dad. But since every artist has a ghost in the closet, he was no exception. And his was a monster. His biggest wound came from his father, a man who never truly cared about him. My father spent years trying to earn his approval, but it never came. No matter what he did, his father scolded him, ridiculed him, made him feel like he was never enough. And then there was my mother: an abusive, manipulative, selfish and cupid woman whose only love in life was money. Did she ever love him? I don’t know. And as for my sister and me, I sometimes wonder if she ever truly loved us either.
My grandfather, meanwhile, lived in a world we were never part of, and we would never even have the chance to even be invited since we were just peasants of whom he was ashamed. He surrounded himself with the Parisian high society, counted a famous French film director among his closest friends, and made it his mission to remind us that we had failed. Failed because, unlike him, we weren’t rubbing shoulders with the right people. And my mother? She was something else entirely. But while my father lived for the applause, while he thrived on bringing joy to others, when the lights went out, when the room emptied, when the music stopped, his demons returned. And they never let him forget what real life was.
January 2018 was the turning point for him. He turned 42 in September 2017 and had started making plans. That year, he began expressing his desire to leave his work behind and find something more stable, something like a retail job, something to keep him busy. He loved his job, and he invested a lot into it, but by then, his income had started to decline. And because he was never great at managing his money, this led him to borrow. Everywhere. Everywhere he could find money.
Debts started piling up. When I sat down and calculated everything he owed after his death, the total came to a staggering €10,000. Naturally, we began asking him, “What are your plans for 2018?” But his response was always the same, short and cryptic: “Oh, you’ll see.” We had no idea what he meant. Something felt off, but none of us knew what.
Then came January 9, 2018, my 23rd birthday. That evening, he called us all. “Hey guys, I don’t understand what’s happening, but my girlfriend’s son has accused me of sexual harassment. The school called her, and they said they’re going to speak to the police.”
We knew he was still under judicial control from his previous convictions. The last time he went to prison had only been a few months prior, and he had managed, thanks to his lawyer, to have part of his sentence suspended, thanks to good behaviour, and also because he engaged himself to start a cure for his alcohol problem, cure that he never did. So when he told us what was happening, he made it sound entirely believable. My grandmother and I were convinced. We immediately called his girlfriend because we knew that, on the same day, she was supposed to attend a teacher’s meeting to discuss her son. But that was about something completely unrelated.
Let me make one thing clear: my father never engaged in that kind of behaviour. And we knew the boy in question, he was manipulative, the kind of child who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy someone’s life if it suited him. It wasn’t hard to believe that he had fabricated the accusation and that it wouldn’t bother him in the slightest. He was (and still is, from what I heard) naturally evil.
When we called Patricia, she immediately dismissed the entire story as pure invention. Her son had never accused my father of anything; he was completely delusional. He had spent the day at home, completely drunk, and she was exhausted. She was already thinking of kicking him out, which she eventually did. That evening, my grandmother and I came to a decision: this had to end, one way or another. It had become far too dangerous for him, for everyone. It was time to have him locked up once and for all, even if we had to be the ones doing the dirty work. As hard as it was, it was the only way.
The night of January 9th to 10th were one of the longest of my life.
I slept barely four hours. I fought tooth and nail with the police, with emergency services, with anyone who could help, desperate to have him arrested. I planned to have him detained through legal means. We had enough evidence to prove he suffered from severe mental illness and that he was a danger to himself and society. I didn’t do this because I wanted to. I did it because it was necessary. It was my duty of care as his daughter. He had gone too far. His delusions had reached a dangerous level. I knew we could force a hospitalisation, force him into treatment, but, of course… That is not knowing France.
The so-called Land of Human Rights.
When I called emergency services, I explained everything clearly: he was an offender, he was drunk, and he was about to get into his car and drive. I wasn’t just talking about a reckless act; I was talking about a potential tragedy waiting to happen. A man about to drive under the influence, a man who could kill someone. I tried to reason with them, to make them see the urgency. Their response?
“Has he taken the vehicle yet?”
“Not yet, but I know he will!”
“Well, then call us back when he does, and we’ll see what we can do.”
I called his friend, who was a police officer, hoping he could intervene privately. He cared, but his response was just as hopeless: “You know how it is. My colleagues don’t have time for this.” I called his other friend, a doctor, to ask what my legal options were. He sighed. “Well, France is a free state. You can’t do anything.” But we had evidence. We had medical records, testimonies, and proof. We had a history of documents about this.
“Oh, yeah, but even if you get a judge, it’s unlikely they’ll even bother considering the case.”
Welcome to France. Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité.
How did the night end? He had nowhere to go. So he returned home. To my grandmother’s place.
When we woke up, she told me she was taking the day off. After I debriefed her about my desperate, sleepless night and my failed attempts to stop him, my realisation that not even God could make him see reason, she decided to settle this herself. We gave him an ultimatum: either you go to the hospital today and commit to serious treatment, or you’re homeless. It took an hour. An hour of convincing, pleading, reasoning. Eventually, he agreed. The weight of everything that had happened seemed to hit him, and for the first time, he admitted that maybe it was time to seek help. We drove him to A&E, and he signed the hospitalisation papers himself. Now, you might think, Alright, so he’s in the hospital, problem solved, right?
Well, no.
Two days after he was admitted, my grandmother received a call. Her mother, aged 90, had passed away. She had to leave for Northern France to handle funeral arrangements, and just like that, with her gone, my father was free to do as he pleased. So what did he do? He signed himself out, claiming he no longer needed treatment, despite having agreed to it just days earlier. We immediately contacted his doctor, making it clear that he needed to be kept under supervision and that he couldn’t be allowed to just walk out. The doctor, also a transphobic piece of work (but that’s just part of the French mentality, and I won’t even get into that), assured us, when we asked for this conversation to be kept private and not disclosed, even less to him:
“Oh yes, of course, you can count on us! You can count on me!”
And the moment she hung up, she went straight to him.
She told him everything.
Naturally, in his delusional mind, he felt betrayed. We hadn’t done this to deceive him; we had done it for his good. He needed this treatment. But since this doctor was nothing more than an incompetent drama queen, she made things worse. Furious, he abandoned the fragile agreement we had managed to hold together. Then, as one problem was not enough, came my mother. The woman had no problem stepping in, so long as there was money involved. Against a very specific promise that a certain amount of money would appear in her bank account, she rushed to the hospital and freed him herself. And from there, the free fall began.
He found somewhere to crash, a place where he drank constantly, where he survived on meal deals and industrial meals from supermarkets. He had no money. Worst in this, he was nowhere to be found. And remember: he was paranoid.
And then, the inevitable happened.
Still under a suspended sentence, he was stopped by the police one night near Montpellier during a routine identity check. 4.2 grams of alcohol per litre of blood. He was arrested on the spot. And since he was already on a suspended condition, he was immediately remanded to court. His trial date was set for February 9, and until then, he would remain in jail.
And that’s when the real nightmare began.
Remember when I mentioned a strike? The French are notorious for that—a bunch of lazy, arrogant people who complain about everything and go on strike for nothing. But this time, it wasn’t just any strike. The prison staff were protesting over their working conditions. Because, of course, they were. With their pet owner Emmanuel Macron having passed yet another ridiculous law, they decided it was time to shut everything down.
And so, my father arrived in prison at the worst possible time.
Under normal circumstances, when you arrive in prison, you are classified and placed in a cell with people who have committed similar offences. He was a petty offender, so he should have been placed with others like him. But no. Oh, no. Hell no. Instead, he was thrown into an overcrowded cell, the size of a small bedroom, packed with six men. Because of the strike, inmates were fed only once a day. Three of them were terrorists, one was a murderer (from what I heard he split his girlfriend in two with a machete), and the last was a rapist. Just as a reminder: his crime was driving under the influence of alcohol. He hadn’t killed anyone. He was mentally ill, but this, in France, back in the day, was a crime in itself. And yet, this is where they put him. Locked away with terrorists, rapists, and murderers in a tiny cell with a single, barely-breathable window. I'm sure animals in zoos are treated even better. The last time France treated people like this was when they deported Jews to Auschwitz in SNCF-stamped trains. And even then, I wouldn’t do this to an animal.
He borrowed phones from inmates, but they made him pay for them. God knows what happened in that cell. But when we finally managed to speak to him, he begged for his life. Later, we learned what we had feared the most, he was likely raped because we refused to pay for the terrorists’ phones. And what’s that thing again? Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, right?
For those unfamiliar with French, it’s the propaganda drilled into children in schools, wrapped up in their meaningless national anthem and the phony “symbols of the Republic", symbols, by the way, stolen from the Monarchy, like the Marianne, and other rubbish. It stands for Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, “Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood.” The French repeat it endlessly, as if saying it makes it true. It's like North Korean citizens praising their leader Kim Jung-un. Pretty much the same rubbish. But having been one of them, I can say with certainty that none of those words mean anything today.
Then came February 9. His trial, and the last time I ever saw my father alive. He begged for his freedom. We gave his lawyer all the evidence, proof that he needed treatment, not prison. That he was mentally unfit for this hell. And even the lawyer wasn't hopeful. He was in tears. And the last image I have of my father is of him crying, begging the judge for mercy. And the judge, in the most cynical, inhumane voice, uttered the words that still haunt me to this day:
“Yes, sir, but here, it’s the court, not the hospital.”
At least now, he was no longer in jail. He had been moved to a cell with a petty offender, where he spent his days sleeping. When he was awake, they gave him medication, and he would drift off again. This was the end-of-life care that France offered my father. And while I was going to Pôle Emploi, trying to find a job, move on, and believe that the worst was behind me, something that would change my life forever was already in motion.
February 12th, 2018.
That morning, he walked to his first day of work in prison. According to the prison priest (who, at the funeral, refused to even speak to me because I am a trans woman), everything had gone well. He worked. Afterwards, he went for a walk, the first time he had stepped outside in three weeks. He smoked a cigarette, his first in a long time. Maybe his final pleasure. He had a meal. I don’t know what it was. Nobody ever told me. They never will. Then came roll call, time to return to their cells.
As he entered the yellow-lit corridor of the fortress-like prison, where the air was thick with the stench of weed and sweat (I know this for a fact; I visited the place where he died, but we’ll get to that later), he collapsed. According to prison staff and the supervisor, he suffered a seizure. At first, they assumed it was epilepsy. They dragged him back to his cell. It was 17:20, and he went into cardiac arrest immediately after.
They claimed they revived him. But I'm sceptical about that. But the only thing we know for certain is that emergency services weren’t even called until 19:00—nearly two hours later.
At 19:10, a local Montpellier newspaper posted an update on Facebook: “An inmate has died in Montpellier’s prison.”
And with it, the flood of dehumanising comments began.
“Another one bites the dust.”
“One less inmate for taxpayers to pay for.”
“Another terrorist dead. I won’t be shedding any tears.”
At 20:00, the phone rang.
It was the prison. The dead inmate in the Facebook post, the nameless prisoner in those comment sections, was my father. I found out while scrolling Facebook in my bath. He was 42 years old. And in death, he was treated no better than garbage—his body dragged to the morgue like waste. A member of the morgue staff later told me that some prison officers spat on his remains. He was my dad. The father I was rebuilding my relationship with. The father I had fought to save.
To be continued.
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