Long struggle for justice exhausts Sophie's parents

For the first time since their daughter Sophie Toscan du Plantier was murdered 11 years ago, Marguerite and Georges Bouniol will not visit the scene of the crime this December.

Instead, the ageing couple will return to west Cork next month, probably about January 20th.

Ms Toscan du Plantier (39) was murdered at her holiday home at Toormore near Schull in the early hours of December 23rd, 1996. Her killer has not been found.

Each Christmas for 10 years, her parents visited the scene of the crime. This year, they have finally accepted the invitation of their son Stéphane to spend the holidays with him, his American wife and two small daughters in New York. The Bouniols' other son Bertrand and Sophie's son Pierre-Louis, now 26, will join them.

"Stéphane has invited us every year, but we always wanted to go to Ireland," Ms Bouniol said on the phone from New York.

"He took Sophie's death very hard; she was 15 years older than him and was like a second mother. We may not be alive much longer, so we decided to do this for Stéphane. For him, perhaps uniting the family at Christmas shows that life goes on.

"For us, nothing has changed. We're happy to be together, but our spirit is still in that house in Ireland. For us, it's even harder to be with the family because Sophie isn't here. We feel her absence more cruelly, because Sophie loved family reunions."

December 23rd remains a terrible day for the Bouniols.

"Even if you try to think about something else, it keeps popping into your mind," Ms Bouniol continued. "On the 23rd, she was either in terrible pain or already dead. We constantly see that image before us: Sophie, lying on the ground, with her face smashed in. No matter how hard you try to think about other things, it comes back.

"If you start thinking about what happened 11 years ago, you don't sleep all night, even with pills. It's not only the 23rd of December. That vision of Sophie haunts us all the time."

Readers of the personal announcements columns in Le Monde and Le Figaro newspapers today will read the following notice from the Bouniols: "Eleven years ago, Sophie Toscan du Plantier was savagely murdered. Those who knew her remember."

Alongside the Bouniols' short text, there'll be a second message from the newly founded Association for the Truth about the Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier née Bouniol, asking for interested parties to contact them by email at assoph0793@orange.fr

The association is the initiative of Ms Bouniol's brother Jean-Pierre Gazeau, a university professor, and her cousin Francis Lefèvre, an engineer. It will campaign for harmonisation of laws on victims' rights throughout the EU, and for Toscan du Plantier's family to gain access to the police file on her murder - something that is possible in France, but not in Ireland.

"Marguerite is worn out. We couldn't leave her alone," said Mr Lefèvre, the group's vice president. "We will appeal to Irish, French and European authorities. We want the investigation to be reactivated and we want co-operation between Irish and French institutions of justice and the police."

The only suspect in the case has been several times detained and released by the Garda Síochána.

Knowing that he is free, and still living near the place of their daughter's murder, "profoundly pains and shocks us," Ms Bouniol says, but the association would not push for proceedings against him. "That's not our work," Mr Lefèvre said. "We are not investigators."

Mr Lefèvre said he felt confident that influential people would join the campaign. Sophie Toscan du Plantier was a well-connected documentary film producer. "She was life, laughter, intelligence, creativity," he said. "Many of us have these memories of her."

In France, suspects are treated as if guilty until proven innocent, and circumstantial evidence can lead to a conviction.

"Our French friends often say they can't believe the guilty person hasn't been arrested," Ms Bouniol said. "It always comes back to the same thing; the Anglo-Saxon legal system blocks everything."

In the first years after their daughter's murder, the Bouniols hoped for justice. Now they are tired, and grateful that the association is taking over their struggle. Sophie would have turned 50 in 2007, and her mother said she felt certain she would have kept her beauty.

"The passage of time doesn't change anything," she said. "If anything, it gets worse. After 11 years, the absence of someone you love, whom you know you'll never see again, is terrifying."