A Liverpool mother has described how she was brutally arrested by French police in Paris in front of her terrified children.
Crosby-based high school teacher Natalie, 33, who wanted to be identified by her first name, had spent the day in Liverpool FC fan park with her children aged 16 months, six and eight years and her adult stepdaughter, 25, while her husband Gareth attended Champions League final.
The couple said their family trip turned into a traumatic experience when an angry and aggressive police officer began pushing 5-foot-tall Natalie before pulling her to the ground and handcuffing her. Natalie spent the night and the following morning in custody in a cell with a “dirty” toilet, while detectives accused her of punching a police officer in the face, a claim she says was “nonsense”.
READ MORE: Real Madrid’s statement confirms what we already knew about the Paris scandal
After urging them to watch CCTV of the incident, Natalie was told she could go and would not be charged.
Gareth and Natalie had planned to meet after the fight and return to their residence on the outskirts of town. But like thousands of other fans in the French capital, their expectations were shattered by the chaos outside the Stade de France.
Gareth, a Hillsborough survivor who testified at the Warrington investigation, had his phone stolen by local criminals outside the stadium and lost contact with his family. Natalie and Gareth had arranged a backup plan before traveling in case of phone problems, and decided that if they could not contact each other, they would meet at the Nation subway station near the fan park.
Natalie told ECHO: “I thought we took our children to a great experience that they would never forget for good reasons, win or lose. We have traveled a lot. We have lived in Spain, we think we know how to organize and take care of ourselves. But Saturday night in Paris was something else. “
(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
Gareth said: “Saturday night up to get away from Saint Denis [the area around the stadium] was bad enough. My phone had been stolen, I had been tear gas twice, two of our group did not even go into the fight.
“Then I found out that Nat had been assaulted and arrested by the police in front of our children, in the middle of their own Paris chaos near the fan park. We are crushed, but we will not leave this. I’m not naive, I was in “Heysel and Hillsborough. We do not want to take any of that.”
When chaos reigned in Paris, Natalie said authorities closed access to the Nations metro station, leaving her with no opportunity to meet her husband. She said: “I asked for a way to get back to our residence after they unexpectedly closed the metro. They did not claim to know the name of the next station, they could not have helped less …
“There were people who were stabbed outside the ground and I was there with three small children. If someone comes and tries to take things from us, what are we going to do then? It sounds silly, but you expect the police to help you somehow; you do not expect them to say ‘this is not our problem’. “
Natalie says she was angry and stressed over the situation, but is adamant that she did nothing to justify what happened next. She said, “I did not know what to do next. We had tried to get an Uber, but it did not work.
“An officer said ‘you can get a taxi’ and pointed to an area where some other people were heading into one. So I was like ‘ok’ and I started trying to flag a taxi down. The same police officer then told me. to ‘move’. I said ‘you just told me to go over here?’ but he shouted ‘move you’ and grabbed me.
I said ‘what are you doing’ and instinctively tried to push him off. That was it, at that point he threw me on the floor and his arm was on my back and his hand was on the back of my head. The kids are screaming, the baby is in the river of tears, he is 16 months old and has no idea what’s going on. I can not believe what’s going on. “
Natalie said she was handcuffed and pulled to her feet. After first refusing to let her talk to her adult stepdaughter, she says officers allowed her to pass the key to their residence before putting her in the back of a van and taking her to a police station.
She said: “I begged them, thank you, my children have been left behind in Paris and I still do not know if they are safe. I do not know if my husband is safe.”
The following morning, Natalie was taken to an interview room and asked to make a statement with the assistance of an interpreter. She said: “The first things she said were ‘the kids are safe and Gareth is outside’. At that point, I relaxed a bit.”
(Photo: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
She explained what happened and was told that the officers’ statement differed from hers in two ways: They claimed she had run to an officer and “hit him in the face” before she “threw herself to the ground” .
She said, “I told them ‘why should I do that?’ I would not do that in front of my children. I’m not saying I was calm, I’m not saying I was not stressed, but the only thing I asked for was help. “
The interview ended when an officer suggested “there will be CCTV”, which Natalie says she thought was “amazing”. At 3.30pm that afternoon, she was released after being asked to sign some papers that had not been translated for her. She said: “I was told because I was a mother with children, the judge would not target me.”
Natalie says she was not seriously injured in the arrest, but received bruises where the officer’s fingers dug into her arms, legs and back.
She said: “I was pushed to the sidewalk and screamed. I instinctively tried to free myself from his grip and was then thrown to the floor, handcuffed and arrested. It was all in front of my now screaming little children. I feel hurt , unsure and very angry that my children should witness it. “
ECHO contacted Paris police for comment.
