Kim Kardashian thought they were going to rape her while she was tied in bathing gown and exclaimed “I have babies” during theft

Kim Kardashian He prayed in silence – by her sister, her best friend, her family – while a masked man pulled her into a hotel room in Paris during the theft of jewelry of 2016 that changed her life. He wore a bathing gown. He had his hands tied with flanges. He had his mouth covered with adhesive tape. He thought he would not survive.

“I was sure that this was the time I was going to rape,” he said Tuesday before a Paris court. “I thought I was going to die.”

He said he was preparing to bed when he heard footsteps on the stairs. At first, he thought they were his sister Kourtney And a friend who returned from one night at Paris Fashion Week.

“Hello? Hello? Who is it?” He shouted. Then, masked men broke into the room.

He took his phone, but did not know the French emergency number. He tried to call his sister and his bodyguard, but a man stopped her. They threw her on the bed, tied her hands with flanges and put a gun in the temple.

“I have babies,” Kardashian said, according to his testimony. “I have to get home. They can take everything. I just have to get home.”

They took her to the bathroom. A man covered his mouth with adhesive tape. They told him that it would be fine if it was quiet.

The last time Kardashian saw the men who, according to the police, stole it, was locked in the marble bath while masked assailants stole more than 6 million dollars in jewels. On Tuesday, almost a decade later, he faced them again, this time from the stretch of the witnesses.

His Testimony marked the emotional climax of a trial that has moved France and has revived debates about the cost of fame and what it means to live in public.

Following digital bread crumbs

At the time of theft, Kardashian was one of the most recognized women on the planet. A fashion icon. A tenderness star. A multimillionaire tycoon. He had dominated a new type of celebrity: one that transmitted in real time, publication after publication, to millions of followers.

But in the early hours of October 3, 2016, that visibility became a weapon against him. The robbery marked a turning point for Kardashian and for the global understanding of vulnerability in the digital age.

The researchers believe that the attackers followed Kardashian’s digital bread crumbs (images, time marks, geographical labels) and exploited them with criminal methods of the old school.

Dressed in black, Kardashian stopped on Tuesday in front of his mother, Kris Jenner, in the courtroom, strongly protected. With a trembling voice, he thanked the French authorities for “allowing me to share my truth.”

He described how the attackers arrived at their hotel disguised as police officers and took to the thoroughly handwritten to the floor. “I thought it was some kind of terrorist attack,” he said.

An attacker pointed to his diamond ring. “He said: ‘Ring! Ring!’ And his hand was pointed out, “he recalled.

The French Prosecutor’s Office states that The aggressors, most between 60 and 70 years old, were part of an experienced criminal network. Two defendants have admitted to having been at the scene. One claims not to know who he was.

Twelve suspects were initially accused. One died later. Another was acquitted by illness. The French press attached them “the grandparents thieves”, but the prosecution insists that they were not harmless retirees.

They face charges that include armed robbery, kidnapping and belonging to a criminal gang, crimes that carry the possibility of life imprisonment.

‘Take everything. I need to live ‘

After the escape of men, Kardashian rubbed the adhesive tape against the bath sink to free his hands. He lowered his jump stairs to look for his friend and stylist, Simone Harouche. Fearing that the thieves return, they went to the balcony and hid among some bushes. While laying there, Kardashian called her mother.

At the beginning of the trial, Harouche remembered having heard Kardashian shout from the top floor: “‘I need to live’. That was what she repeated: ‘take everything. I need to live'”.

Harouche locked in a bathroom and sent a message to the sister and Kardashian’s bodyguard: “Something is going very bad.” Later, he heard Kardashian down the stairs jumping, with the ankles still tied. “He was out of his own,” Harouche said. “I didn’t stop screaming.”

Judge David de Pas asked if Kardashian had become the target of attacks when publishing his photos with “jewels of great value.” Harouche rejected the premise. “The fact that a woman uses jewels does not make her white of attacks,” he said. “It’s like saying that a woman who uses short skirt deserves to be raped.”

After the robbery, critics such as designer Karl Lagerfeld harshly criticized Kardashian for flaunting his wealth, and Lagerfeld declared Associated Press that he had been “too public” with his jewels. But as the details of theft were known, public opinion changed.

“I started having a phobia,” Kardashian said. “This experience really changed everything to us.”

He declared before the court that his home in Los Angeles was assaulted shortly after, in what seemed to be a similar attack. Without security guards, he said, “I can’t even sleep at night.” Now he has between four and six guards at home.

At the time of the 2016 theft, he said, his bodyguard was staying in a separate hotel: “We assumed that if we were in a hotel it was safe, it was protected.”

He said that Paris had once been a sanctuary, a place where he walked alone at 3 or 4 in the morning, watching windows and sometimes stopping hot chocolate. “I always felt very sure,” he said. “It was always a magical place.”

The judgment is expected to end at the end of this month.