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The night armed robbers tied up Kim Kardashian and forced her to hand over jewels worth millions of dollars left her traumatised and changed her life for ever, her best friend and fashion stylist told a Paris court.
Speaking for the first time since the 2016 attack in Paris, Simone Harouche said she thought the American TV star was being raped and that they would both die when she was woken from her sleep in the early hours by the sound of Kardashian’s terrified screams.
Harouche, 45, hid in her bathroom and tried to raise the alarm when the men broke into their luxury hotel duplex in the early hours.
“I’ve worked for Kim, I have also been friends with Kim for a long time. I know her very well, I know her sounds, her mannerisms, when she’s happy, when she’s more serious. We’ve been friends since we were little girls,” she said.
“So when I heard this sound it was very different and it woke me up out of my sleep because it was sound that I had never heard from Kim. It was terror. What I heard specifically: ‘I have babies and I need to live,’ this is what she kept saying. ‘Take everything – I need to live’.”
Harouche was in tears at one point as she testified that she feared she would never see her children, then aged two and four, again.
“I thought they were coming for me next and I was very afraid of what was happening to my friend upstairs. I had no idea what was going on and I was scared she was being raped or violated. I thought the worst.”
Harouche said Kardashian, whose ankles had been taped, came hopping down the stairs of the two-storey apartment to find her after the gunmen left with an estimated $10m (£7.5m) jewellery including the 18.9-carat diamond engagement ring from Kardashian’s then husband, Kanye West, worth an estimated $4m (£3m).
“That’s the kind of person Kim is and I’m the sort of person to hide. She’s the sort of person to take care of someone,” she told the court.
She added: “To see my friend with her feet taped and her bathrobe, a very light robe with nothing under it, all messed up and pulled I obviously thought she could have been raped or very violated. She was beside herself; I’ve never seen her like this before. She just was screaming and kept saying: ‘We need to get out of here. We need help. What are we going to do if they come back? We may need to jump out the window or hide in the first floor’ … She was just thinking: ‘How are we going to be safe? How are we going to survive’?”
She said both women had had post-traumatic stress disorder and that Kardashian had suffered a life-changing loss of personal freedom.
“She was very free at the time and we never thought being in our hotel room meant that we should ever fear for our safety.”
She added: “I think she went to therapy for a long time also after this happened.”
Asked whether Kardashian had taken risks by flaunting her wealth and whereabouts on social media, she said: “Just because a woman wears jewellery that doesn’t make her a target. That’s like saying because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.
“I work with a lot of celebrities and none of my clients feels they shouldn’t wear something because they might be robbed. That’s part of the business of entertainment.”
A group of men, some of them elderly and nicknamed the “grandpa robbers” by French media, are on trial in Paris, charged with robbing jewels worth millions of euros from the American reality TV star when she was in the French capital for fashion week in 2016.
Ten suspects, whose ages range from 35 to 78, are on trial until 23 May. Some are accused of aiding in the organisation of the robbery. Eight of the accused deny any involvement.
Kardashian is expected at the trial on Tuesday afternoon. The reality star is ready to “confront” her attackers, her lawyers said last week.
“She is committed to attending in person the trial and to confronting those who attacked her. She will do so with dignity and courage,” her French lawyers Leonor Hennerick and Jonathan Mattout told AFP.
