Kim Kardashian’s childhood friend and then stylist told a Paris court on Tuesday that she heard the celebrity beg for her life when she was bound with zip ties and held at gunpoint during a 2016 heist in her hotel room during Fashion Week in the French capital.
Simone Harouche, who was sharing their two-floor hotel suite, said that she heard Kardashian yelling “`I have babies and I need to live.’ That is what she kept on saying, `Take everything. I need to live.“’ “I was scared that she was raped or violated. I thought the worst,” Harouche said.
Kardashian is expected to speak later Tuesday about the trauma that reshaped her life and redefined the risks of celebrity in the age of social media. Her appearance is expected to be the most emotionally charged moment of a trial that began last month.
One of the most recognizable figures on the planet, Kardashian is set to take the stand against 10 men accused of orchestrating the 2016 robbery that left her locked in a marble bathroom while masked assailants made off with more than $6-million in jewels.
Harouche told the court that the trauma of the robbery “forever” changed the life of her friend that she’s known since age 12, taking away her freedom.
“She now has a completely different lifestyle,“ she said. “In terms of security, she can’t go alone, she doesn’t go alone to places anymore. To lose your sense of freedom … it’s horrible.”
Kardashian’s testimony is expected to revisit, in painful detail, how intruders zip-tied her hands, demanded her ring, and left her believing that she might never see her children again.
David De Pas, the lead judge presiding over the jury trial, asked Harouche whether Kardashian turned herself into a target by posting images of herself with “jewels of great value.”
“No,” Harouche responded. “Just because a woman wears jewelry, that doesn’t make her a target. That’s like saying that because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.”
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has died. Another has been excused from proceedings because of serious illness. Most are in their 60s and 70s – dubbed “les papys braqueurs,” or “the grandpa robbers,” by the French media – but investigators insist they were no harmless retirees. Authorities have described them as a seasoned and coordinated criminal group.
Two of the defendants have admitted being at the scene. The others deny any involvement – some even claim they didn’t know who Kardashian was. But police say the group tracked her movements through her own social media posts, which flaunted her jewelry, pinpointed her location and exposed her vulnerability.
The heist transformed Kardashian into a cautionary tale of hyper-visibility in the digital age.
In the aftermath, she withdrew from public life. She developed severe anxiety and later described symptoms of agoraphobia.
“I hated to go out,” she said in a 2021 interview. “I didn’t want anybody to know where I was I just had such anxiety.”
Harouche, who locked herself in a bathroom as the robbery was taking place in Kardashian’s suite upstairs, said that she sought counseling for post-traumatic stress afterward and largely stopped working as a stylist for the stars, switching instead to interior design.
“I didn’t want to travel with them anymore,” she said. “That experience was very stressful for me. It made me fearful of being around celebrities.”
Kardashian’s lawyers confirmed that she would appear in court.
“She has tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system,” they wrote, adding that she hopes the trial proceeds “in an orderly fashion and with respect for all parties.”
Her lawyers say she is “particularly grateful” to French authorities – and ready to confront those who attacked her with dignity.
