Alexandre Farel is convicted of rape and given a five-year suspended sentence

Alexandre Farel is convicted of rape and given a five-year suspended sentence, a verdict that ends his imprisonment but does not restore the life he had before the case. The ruling follows a two-year investigation and a trial shaped both by evidence about his encounter with Mila Wizman and by intense public scrutiny. Its consequences reach beyond the courtroom: Alexandre is released, Mila’s lawyers denounce the judgment and reserve the right to appeal, and his parents leave with sharply different private burdens.

Background and investigation

The case begins when three officers from the Police judiciaire arrive at Alexandre’s father’s apartment and tell him that a young woman has accused him of rape. Alexandre initially denies knowing what they are talking about. In a later explanation to his father, he describes attending a party with Mila, the daughter of his mother’s partner, and recounts their encounter as consensual. The opposing accounts establish the dispute that will persist through the proceedings: the sexual encounter itself is confirmed, but its coercive nature is contested.

The investigation turns private accounts into a formal evidentiary record. Mila comes to the police station with her mother the morning after the incident, crying and visibly distressed. Investigators arrange medical examinations, search the location she identified and Alexandre’s parents’ apartment, and recover the yellow underwear she described. Mila identifies Alexandre in a lineup; DNA results later confirm that they had sexual intercourse. Toxicology tests show that both had consumed alcohol and cannabis, and that Alexandre had also taken cocaine. The experts disagree about whether the encounter was coercive, leaving the question of consent unresolved by physical evidence alone.

The prosecution becomes public within hours of Alexandre’s detention. Agence France-Presse reports that Jean Farel’s son has been placed in custody on suspicion of rape. Alexandre’s lawyer denies the allegations and characterizes the encounter as consensual. The leak and ensuing coverage draw Claire and Jean into the case: reporters contact them, and Claire receives insults on Twitter, where the accusation against her son collides with her recent interview about the Cologne assaults.

From supervised release to trial

After questioning, Alexandre is placed under judicial supervision rather than kept in custody. The restrictions are consequential: he cannot approach Mila or leave France, and he abandons plans to continue his studies at Stanford University. Over the next two years, his life is repeatedly interrupted by police requests, hearings, expert appointments, and a renewed confrontation with Mila. The long intervals between these demands give way to renewed anxiety about possible imprisonment.

The case proceeds to trial after an effort to reclassify the accusation as sexual assault fails. A proposed financial settlement also comes to nothing; Adam Wizman warns that he will file a complaint if anyone attempts to intimidate the family. Five months before the trial, Alexandre receives his court summons. During the intervening period, he unexpectedly encounters Mila by the Saint-Martin Canal. He approaches her; after she tries to get away, he grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her. Passersby call the police. His judicial supervision is revoked, and he is imprisoned at Fresnes, where other detainees identify him as a sex offender and mistreat him.

Trial, evidence, and public judgment

The trial unfolds amid the wider public reckoning that followed the Weinstein revelations. Women gather outside the Palais de Justice with signs invoking #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc, while journalists and spectators queue to enter. Maître Célérier argues that media coverage has prejudiced the proceedings and damaged Alexandre’s presumption of innocence. Claire, unwilling to join public statements, experiences her silence as a personal failure even as she continues to support her son.

Inside the courtroom, the case’s evidence is presented alongside competing interpretations of the people involved. The investigating officer recounts Mila’s report, the search, the identification, and the test results, while noting that experts differ on whether the intercourse was coercive. The prosecutor accepts that the sexual encounter between Alexandre and Mila on the night of January 11–12, 2016, is not in dispute, but frames the central difficulty as understanding Alexandre’s passage to the act. The prosecutor describes a contrast between a diligent, vulnerable student and a side of him capable of being contemptuous, possessive, jealous, and violent, and calls the rape opportunistic.

The closing arguments also expose the unequal meanings each side attaches to the night. The prosecutor stresses Mila’s fear of not being believed and the difficulty of recounting the assault before strangers. Célérier, in turn, argues that media condemnation has already destroyed Alexandre’s prospects: he has left engineering school without a degree, lost his plans to study in the United States, and been branded a rapist in online search results. The case thus brings formal adjudication into tension with a public judgment that, in the defense’s view, has already taken effect.

Verdict and consequences

That evening, the court finds Alexandre guilty and sentences him to five years in prison, suspended. He is released, though he would serve the sentence if he reoffended. Claire briefly signals to him and hurries to the glass enclosure to speak with him; Alexandre must first return to Fresnes for the administrative process of release. Mila remains seated, holding her father’s hand, while her lawyers leave to address the press and call the verdict unjust and partial, reserving the possibility of an appeal.

The verdict does not reunite Claire and Adam. As Claire leaves, she and Adam exchange a look that conveys the damage their choices have done to their relationship. She avoids the photographers, then breaks down alone in the Palais de Justice. Her grief gathers two years of suppressed strain and the collapse of a future she had imagined with Adam, even as she has stood by Alexandre throughout the case.

Jean shows no visible emotion in court; he has taken an anxiolytic shortly before the verdict. He tells reporters that he will make no comment and leaves wanting to recount the ordeal to Françoise, who no longer remembers his name. At home, he finds her on the floor, unable to rise without help, and assists her to the bathroom. The judgment that releases his son is therefore set against Françoise’s irreversible decline and Jean’s continuing care for her. The ending grants Alexandre conditional freedom, not a return to his former life, and makes clear that the verdict resolves the legal charge without undoing the losses and fractures surrounding the case.