The publication of a sensational ”kill-and-tell” autobiography by one of France’s most infamous child-murderers has sparked a national debate over the right of convicts to make money from their crimes.
The French justice minister, Dominique Perben, said he was ”deeply shocked, as any human being would be”, by the appearance last month of So Do You Regret It? by Patrick Henry who was freed on parole in April 2001 after spending nearly a quarter of a century in jail for the murder of a seven-year-old boy.
Confronted with the outrage of victims’ associations, Perben has promised to look into restricting the publication of such works in the future — a threat that has drawn criticism from publishers and civil liberties groups.
”He cannot ban them; it would contravene every law on freedom of expression,” said Emmanuel Pierrat, a publishing lawyer.
”But the government could well approve a bill denying criminals the right to earn royalties. It’s censorship under another name.”
Alain Boulay, the head of an association for the parents of child victims, said relatives’ feelings should come first.
”Can you even imagine the pain of a couple who have lost their child, at seeing the murderer’s name and face in bookshop windows 15 or 20 years afterwards?” he asked. ”It’s grotesque, completely unacceptable.”
Henry, then aged 22, was jailed for life in 1977 for the murder of seven-year-old Philippe Bertrand, whom he abducted from outside his primary school near Troyes, about 100 miles south-east of Paris.
He strangled the boy, took the body to a room he had rented under a false name and stuffed it under the bed.
Henry helped in the search for Philippe, and days before his arrest, appeared on a popular TV chat show to declare that ”people who kidnap children deserve death.” It later emerged that soon after killing Philippe, he had called the boy’s parents to demand a ransom.
The uproar throughout France was immense. Letters poured in to the police and the court calling for ”the monster” to be ”tortured before his execution”, even ”strangled with the same cord he used to kill Philippe”. A succession of lawyers publicly refused to defend him.
The one who eventually took the case managed to put the death penalty on trial and convinced the jury to commute the prosecutor’s demand for the guillotine into a life sentence.
Four years after saving Henry’s life, Robert Badinter became justice minister and abolished the death penalty in France.
Henry proved to be a model prisoner, gaining his baccalauréat and maths and computer degrees in prison.
Feelings about him still ran so high that he was only freed last year under a new law that took such politically sensitive parole decisions from the justice minister and gave them to an independent tribunal.
Many of those who opposed his release felt they had been justified when Henry was re-arrested in Spain last October with 10kg of hashish in the boot of his car. The French government is seeking his extradition for flouting his parole conditions.
The title of his book is drawn from a celebrated remark he made to the stunned judge who informed him he had escaped the guillotine: ”You will not regret it.”
Before his re-arrest, Henry was paid an undisclosed sum for an interview and photos published in Paris-Match.
He also received an alleged 100 000 euros advance from his publishers, Calmann-Levy, and is set to make more from sales of the book which, while not spectacular, are progressing steadily.
But another publisher, Pierre Fery, said there were enough legal loopholes, including publication abroad, to ensure ”kill-and-tell” books would always get printed. ”It’s up to publishers to be responsible,” he told Le Figaro. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001