Kardashian looks against Parisian pregnant people, testifies to fears and death

By Thomas Adamson, John Leicester and Nicolas Vaux-Montagny, Associated Press

Paris (AP) – Kim Kardashian said a still prayer – for her sister, her best friend, her family – as a masked man to bring her to herself in a Parisian hotel room in the 2016 Juwelty -Heist. She only wore a bathrobe. It was bound with zippers. She thought she would not survive.

“I was sure that he would rape me,” she said to a Paris court on Tuesday. “I absolutely thought I would die.”

The last time Kardashian saw that the police had robbed her, she was bound with a gun held and was locked in a marble bath, while masked attackers stole jewelry. Almost a decade later, she returned to Paris to face them – this time from the witness stand.

Her testimony marked the emotional highlight of a process that packed France and debates about fame, privacy and what it means to live in public and almost die. The night in her suite during the Fashion Week in 2016 changed its relationship to fame and security forever.

Kardashian, dressed in black and dark sunglasses, stood in the full courtroom against her mother Kris Jenner. Her voice broke when she thanked the French authorities to “share my truth”.

She told the court that the attackers as police officers were clad with the concierge in handcuffs. “I thought it was a kind of terrorist attack,” she said.

She described how they tied their hands with zippers, dragged them into the bathtub and pointed to their temples. A robber pointed to her ring. “He said: 'Ring! Ring!' And he showed on his hand. “

The French prosecutors say that the men who have orchestrated the attack – most in the 1960s and 70s – were part of an experienced criminal ring who pursued Kardashian's movements about social media. Two of the defendants have admitted to being at the scene. One claims that he doesn't know who she was.

Originally, twelve suspects were charged. You died. Another was excused for illness. The French press called the Les Papys Braqueurs group -“The Grandpa robbers” -but the prosecutors insist that they are not harmless pensioners.

Kardashian, who once divided almost every moment of her life online, later recognized the role that visibility played. “People watched,” she said in an interview in 2021. “They knew what I had. They knew where I was.”

At the beginning of the trial, Kardashian's girlfriend from childhood and then stylist Simone Harouche remembered her cry from above: “I have babies and I have to live. 'She said that again and again:” Take everything. I have to live. “

Harouche, who was hidden in the bathroom on the ground floor during the robbery, said that she wrote Kardashian's sister Kourtney and her bodyguard an SMS: “Something is very wrong.” Later Kardashian heard the stairs down, still bound with her ankles. “She was next to her,” said Harouche. “She just shouted.”

Harouche said that the robbery “forever” changed her friend's feeling of freedom. “She now has a completely different lifestyle,” she said. “In terms of security, she cannot go alone, she no longer goes to places alone. To lose her feeling of freedom … it's terrible.”

Judge David de Pas asked if Kardashian had made himself a goal by posting photos of himself with “gems of great value”.

“No,” replied Harouche. “Just because a woman wears jewelry does not make her a goal. It is like saying that a woman wears a short skirt she deserves to be raped.”

At the time of the robbery, Kardashian was one of the most photographed women in the world, a global pioneer of fashion and social media pioneer. In the following days, critics, including designer Karl Lagerfeld, said she shared too much. But as details – the weapon, the silence, helplessness – the public feeling changed.

As a result, Kardashian withdrew from public life. It developed severe anxiety and symptoms of agoraphobia. “I hated going out,” she said. “I didn't want anyone to know where I was … I was just afraid.”

Originally published: May 13, 2025 at 8:17 a.m. Edt