THE LIVING PHOENIX

Introducing oneself is always difficult: you never know which information is of interest for your audience, and which can lend to controversy.  But I believe I have solved the problem by hanging up on the phoenix tirade. Have you ever heard of the Phoenix? Assuming yes, let me tell you briefly why I view myself as somehow related to this mythical bird, known for its ability to resurrect from fire and ashes.

In 1999, I moved to France to pursue a PhD in Legal studies at the University of Perpignan, after my graduation in Benin, in two disciplines − Law and American Civilization − with a Master's degree. The promotion 2000-2001 of the Lawyers' School of MontpellierThen the following year, at 24, I joined the Lawyers' School in Montpellier where I obtained cum laude my diploma. We were just two blacks; but I was the only foreigner out of 60 students with clearly no chance to be recruited. How quickly can you  identify me on this prom's photo?

I took my oath in April 2002, while all my fellows did it in December 2001. I had to fight once more, to prove the reciprocity between France and Benin as far as were concerned the conditions to fulfill for an attorney to be registered, which I did owing to the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) both countries signed. Nonetheless, the odds were against me as far as practicing law in France was concerned; and so many times, I have been urged, kindly as well as rudely, to go back to my country.

After a short period of training at the Bar of Rodez, I moved to Bordeaux where I had my first fight against racial prejudices: a clerk explicitly called me "nigger" while we both were in dress, meaning on official duty in the courtroom. A judge even grabbed me by the collar of my jacket to jostle me out of his office, because he did not want to schedule a hearing so that I could urgently defend one of my clients who was a stranger too. But in his report to the president of the Bordeaux Bar, he deliberately presented the facts as if I were the one who assaulted him; and from then on, I became more than ever, a persona non grata.

I was then forced to leave, bruised and bitter, the law firm I had just created, because a judge said falsely that my practice as a lawyer was based on a fictitious collaboration agreement. I discovered later on in Guadeloupe, French land although populated mainly by black folks, the weight of the prejudices of which I have already paid the price in France through my unjust disbarment. But the same Court of Cassation, which invalidated my registration by the Court of Appeal of Basse-Terre, ordered in the meantime my re-enrollment in Bordeaux that I had had to leave in pain.

While setting for Canada with the hope that my skin color would no longer be a ground of abuse, I received a call from Mayotte, another French black land where within just two years, I opened up to four law offices. Here with Mr. Gilles Ouimet, president of the Bar of Québec in 2010. A good man and a very fine attorney.

Now, tell me what is the safest way to bring down a man and break his life? Just accuse him of rape! Nothing more effective... since prima facie, everyone would believe the female plaintiff.

She may be a perfct puppet controlled by those who, out of jealousy, have an interest in the fall of the man; and the police may have gathered no evidence to support the alleged offense.

Yet the judicial system is established in such a way that the defendant − especially if he is a prominent lawyer − undergoes all the harshness of a lengthy prosecution, in which, right away, he is presumed guilty. In case he survives the procedure in the end, his career will surely have been ruined, knowing that it takes too much energy to rebuild what is almost the work of a lifetime.

If so far, my life has been a succession of vertiginous falls, followed by almost miraculous redemptions, I simply hope once more, that I am right in saying that I am a living phoenix.

A big "thank you" to everyone who helped me come back to life so far!

The Phoenix