Hi, I’m Kim Kardashian,” she says.
The voice is instantly recognisable, of course – from endless hours of reality TV consumed by millions, from thousands of social media posts and parodies. She is, as ever, impeccably dressed: a sharp black suit, sparkling jewellery; poised, perfectly made up.
But this is no ordinary public appearance for the woman famous for being famous. On Tuesday, at the Palais de Justice – which houses France’s highest court – Kardashian has come to give crucial evidence in a case that revisits the harrowing crime she endured nearly a decade ago; the night she was bound and gagged, her hands zip-tied, her mouth taped shut, as she feared she would be raped, shot, and left for dead.
Kardashian’s highly anticipated appearance, she tells the packed courtroom, is to “tell my truth”. She is to testify against 10 men – most of them elderly, all with long criminal records – accused of kidnapping and robbing her on the night of 3 October 2016.
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has since died, and another was excused due to illness. The French press dubbed them les papys braqueurs – “the grandpa robbers” – but prosecutors insist they are anything but harmless retirees. All deny the allegations.
More than $10m (£7.5m) worth of jewellery was stolen during what would be dubbed “the heist of the century” – a brazen attack that took place inside Kardashian’s luxury hotel room just before 3am, during her visit to Paris for Fashion Week.
The crime – along with its aftermath – was brutal. Kardashian tells the court she was held at gunpoint and, fearing sexual assault, began “saying a prayer”. She was naked under her robe. One man pulled her legs towards him on the bed; another held a gun to her. “I absolutely did think I was going to die,” she says.
At first, she thought the stomping on the stairs was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning late from a night out. She called out – “Hello? Hello? Who is it?” – but no one answered. Then masked men stormed in. Dressed as police, they demanded her jewellery and pointed to the diamond ring on her bedside table.
“He said, ‘Ring! Ring!’ and he pointed to his hand,” Kardashian recalls. They took the ring and hunted for the rest – a jewellery box worth millions. They zip-tied her hands and taped her mouth.
Her vulnerability, she explains, stemmed in part from a false sense of security. “We assumed that if we were in a hotel, it was safe, it was secure,” she says.
‘I was sure they were going to shoot me’
One of the men, she recalls, told her she would be fine “if I stayed quiet”. Another had dragged the concierge into her suite in handcuffs. “I thought it was some sort of terrorist attack,” says Kardashian.
“I have babies,” she pleaded. “I have to make it home. They can take everything. I just have to make it home.”
She was carried to the bathroom and locked inside. She tells the court how she rubbed the tape binding her wrists against the sink in an effort to free herself, then hopped downstairs to find her friend and stylist, Simone Harouche. The pair hid on a balcony, terrified the attackers would return.
Harouche, who testified earlier in the trial, remembered Kardashian screaming, “I need to live. Take everything. I need to live.” She locked herself in a bathroom and texted Kardashian’s sister and bodyguard: “Something is very wrong.”
Almost immediately following her ordeal, Kardashian was publicly dismissed, dehumanised, victim-blamed for creating a “blueprint” for the robbery “by her own broadcast” – for posting about her life and whereabouts online.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams that me posting something would be an invitation for someone to come and take something,” she says.
At the time, the consensus appeared to be that someone as wealthy as Kim Kardashian had no right to complain about being robbed of jewellery; that anyone who sold their life to the public should expect to be punished for it.
People like Kardashian – too vacuous for sympathy, too sexual for seriousness – had, the public seemed to say, signed up for it.
Perhaps it’s unnecessary to point out that this is a hearing unlike most others. The image alone – of Skims founder Kardashian, hands clasped, standing at a lectern beneath soaring ceilings and gilt-framed Neoclassical paintings inside Paris’s historic cour d’appel – feels curiously surreal.
The media circus knows it, too. More than 100 journalists queued outside the court from as early as 6am, cameras slung around necks, lanyards clutched tightly. Fans lined the grand corridors near to where the hearing is being held, equally transfixed.
But it isn’t Kardashian’s celebrity that makes this trial feel different – it is the woman behind it.
You will, no doubt, already have an opinion on Kim Kardashian – even if your opinion is that you don’t want one.
Since 2007, when Keeping Up with the Kardashians (or KUWTK) – a reality show chronicling the lives of Kardashian and her sisters Kourtney and Khloe, and half-sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner – first aired, she has been all but public property. And, more to the point, completely unavoidable.
Her rise to fame was dramatic, the fascination with her unrelenting, and yet “What is Kim Kardashian famous for?” remains one of the most frequently asked questions about her on Google.
Those who admire her argue that calling her shallow misses the point – that commodifying her life, and selling it as a suite of assets, is simply shrewd business.
Her marriages – first to Damon Thomas, then to Kris Humphries, and most famously to Kanye West in 2014 – have only fleshed out the glossy, ever-unfolding public narrative that follows her.
At times, it feels like that narrative has followed her to court.
Is she aware of this? Arguably, yes, if her carefully chosen outfit is any indication: sculpted black blazer, hair slicked back. It is sharp, controlled – not too formal, not too feminine; a balancing act that many women would recognise.
For the most part, she speaks with composure. “I don’t want to answer because I’m not absolutely certain,” she says more than once. But there is no hiding the horror of what she recounts. “[It] changed my life and it changed my family’s life,” Kardashian tells the court.
Her voice trembles at times as she speaks, but she remains composed, even when describing the lasting impact the attack has had on her.
‘This experience really changed everything for us’
Paris, once a sanctuary – the place where she would stroll alone at 3 or 4am, window shopping, sometimes stopping for hot chocolate – was transformed into a site of trauma. “It always felt really safe,” she says. “It was always a magical place.”
In the months that followed the robbery, her home in Los Angeles was also targeted, in what she believed was a copycat attempt. She now sleeps with four to six security guards at her house. “Without them, I can’t even sleep at night,” she tells the court. “This experience really changed everything for us.”
Though critics at the time accused her of flaunting her wealth – with even Karl Lagerfeld suggesting she had been “too public” – the tide of opinion slowly shifted. Questions about visibility, blame, and the price of celebrity began to surface. And while her image has continued to complicate that narrative – press material was reportedly issued during the trial that praised her diamond necklace – Kardashian has appeared to acknowledge the contradictions without flinching.
She thanks the French authorities for allowing her “to tell my truth”. As she ends her testimony – the trial is to continue tomorrow without her – her voice is quiet but firm.
“This is my closure,” she says. “This is me putting this, hopefully, to rest.”
