Why did Charleroi judges impose eight years for attacking an ex-partner and her mother?

The Charleroi

Place

Charleroi

Walloon city whose criminal court heard the case.

Why it matters

Walloon city whose criminal court heard the case.

About

Charleroi is a city and a municipality of Wallonia, located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. It is the largest city in both Hainaut and Wallonia. The city is situated in the valley of the Sambre, in the south-west of Belgium, not far from the border with France. By 1 January 2008, the total population of Charleroi was 201,593.

Official site ↗View source record ↗

The judgment is the latest development in a case initially reported by La DH, Belga and regional broadcaster Télésambre. It matters beyond the courtroom because the violence occurred during a meeting involving a separated couple and their young child—a setting the Belgian Institute for the Equality of Women and Men identifies as a period of heightened risk when one partner does not accept a separation.

According to the hearing report carried by Télésambre, the defendant went to his former partner’s home on 1 January to collect his two-year-old son. He was carrying a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench. The prosecution alleged that he struck the two women with the tools: his former partner sustained injuries to her thigh and hand, while her mother was struck several times, including near the throat. The published reports do not provide complete medical findings, and Belgium Pulse is withholding the victims’ identities.

The defendant acknowledged striking his former mother-in-law but disputed the prosecution’s account of what happened to his former partner. Télésambre reported that he maintained she had possessed the screwdriver and fell onto it while he was defending himself. He also denied bringing either tool as part of a premeditated attack. His lawyer asked the court to replace the attempted-assassination allegations with attempted murder and assault, and sought a probationary suspension.

The Charleroi public prosecutor’s office took the opposite view. Its representative requested a prison term of at least ten years, relying both on the alleged circumstances and on what the prosecution described as the defendant’s substantial criminal record. Télésambre, citing Belga, reported that he had accumulated 11 previous convictions, including convictions involving violence. The court ultimately imposed eight years and retained two counts of attempted murder, according to the later judgment report. That reported outcome should be distinguished from the prosecution’s request: a sentencing demand is not a verdict, and the court did not adopt it in full.

The case is chiefly a Walloon justice story rather than an international one, but it sits within a Belgian and European effort to recognise violence by partners and former partners as a structural safety problem. The federal Institute for the Equality of Women and Men estimates that Belgium experiences about 140 cases of fatal or potentially fatal partner violence each year, while warning that the country still lacks a complete official registration system covering murders and attempted murders in an intrafamily context. Michel Pasteel, the Institute’s director, has also argued that victims face gaps in protection and long waits for support services during separation proceedings.

At EU level, Directive 2024/1385 requires member states to strengthen prevention, victim support and access to justice in cases of violence against women and domestic violence. It does not decide the guilt or sentence in this Charleroi prosecution; those remain matters for Belgian courts. Its relevance lies in the wider obligation to identify danger earlier, coordinate services and improve data collection.

The immediate question is now whether the convicted man or the prosecution will appeal. No authoritative public source reviewed by Belgium Pulse states that an appeal has been lodged, and the full written judgment was not publicly available. Until those points are confirmed, the safest conclusion is narrow: the court imposed an eight-year sentence after accepting homicidal intent but not, on the available reporting, the prosecution’s allegation of premeditation.