Original subtitles

In September 2017, a young French nanny was tortured,

murdered and thrown on a garden bonfire.

The fire brigade turned up, one of them was putting the fire out

and stamping it out.

He realised that there was a body in the ashes.

'They cooked chicken on a barbecue nearby to try and hide the smell.'

Fingers, limbs, and part of a nose.

It was very grisly.

TRANSLATION: There are no words, it's monstrous.

She beat her with an electrical cord and she pushed and slapped her.

I'm going to kill you! OK? Be quick!

21-year-old Sophie Lionnet had also been interrogated and tortured,

whilst filmed by her killers Sabrina Kouider and Ouissem Medouni.

What you were listening to was a quiet

and unassuming girl being harangued, threatened and intimidated.

It was a torture video.

Sophie had been subjected to what can only be

described as waterboarding.

She had four broken limbs and a broken jaw.

I can't believe what they done to her. She could have walked out.

I don't know why she was stuck there.

She was trapped psychologically and physically.

How did we not notice? It's unbelievable.

This is one of the most tragic cases that I've ever covered.

Southfields, a well-to-do suburb of London,

just next-door to Wimbledon.

It's a safe place where people move to bring up families.

We've lived here all our lives.

It's a very friendly place to live, very safe place to live.

People know each other because they stay a long time.

It's a unique part of London.

This feels like a village.

We call it the Southfields village.

Basically, you cannot not know a person.

How about you guys? Are you sharing with him?

Good friends.

Me being in there for 14 years, I seen the whole world passing by.

We know each other, everybody knows mums, the nannies.

This is what Southfields is, family orientated.

But in September 2017,

a series of disturbing events unfolded in the Southfields.

They took place at the home of glamorous mother of two

Sabrina Kouider and her partner Ouissem, or Sam, Medouni.

What happened was so gruesome, so disturbing, that it

shocked residents to the core.

'The charred remains were discovered by firefighters.'

'They cooked chicken on a barbecue nearby to try and hide the smell.'

I saw smoke coming from the garden, it was directly on the street.

You couldn't not see it.

My husband went to the corner shop and as he passed the house,

he noticed the smoke.

He thought it was very close to the end of the house,

so he was alerted on a safety level.

He just looked through the gate and he noticed the gentleman

standing there, throwing sticks onto the fire

and thought, someone's there monitoring it, there's nothing more

that he can do, so he carried on.

The fire was in the garden of Kouider and Medouni's flat

on the corner of Pulborough and Wimbledon Park roads,

directly opposite the newsagent.

A couple of customers said that there is a fire on Pulborough Road.

Somebody's doing a barbecue,

or it's too close to the patio and there's smoke billowing.

One neighbour whose house is backed onto the garden was

so concerned about the fire, she rang 999.

I disappeared out the back for a while and when I came out,

it was carnage.

Nancy called me and said, "The fire brigade are here."

And I was passing by anyway, so I stopped and we were chatting.

As we were chatting, the police turned up.

The road has been sealed off.

There's about at least five or six police cars. Two fire engines.

Then, they put up the white tent, and they blocked off the road,

and we were thinking, "Oh, what's happening?"

Eventually, another unmarked van came, men in white suits got out

and that's when I realised that something is quite serious here.

We couldn't understand why there was the tent there,

why the police were there over a fire. It didn't make sense to us.

And then, we saw Sam being escorted out of the house with handcuffs.

The man who had been arrested by police was Sam Medouni,

partner of Sabrina Kouider.

As Medouni was driven away for questioning, forensic officers

arrived. It shocked the community, who couldn't understand

why they were there.

But then, forensic investigators carried out what looked like a body.

We saw a big red box, not coffin shaped,

but quite large coming out after the forensics had done their work.

There were lots of rumours going around.

We heard they had found a body.

Police later confirmed there were human remains in the fire,

but the body was so badly burned,

they couldn't even identify the victim.

I can't remember how we found out. I think it was probably about a week later,

when they identified the body.

We had worked it out by that point anyway.

I think most people knew quite quickly through the process of elimination who it was.

'Police have confirmed the body found in the garden of a property

'in Southfields was French nanny Sophie Lionnet.'

Neighbours had guessed correctly.

The charred remains in the bonfire were those of the

21-year-old nanny who worked for Sabrina Kouider and Sam Medouni.

When I had a reporter coming in to me straightaway

and saying, "Do you know so-and-so?" I was like, "Yes, I know so-and-so."

"And do you know she was murdered?" And I couldn't speak.

Not only had Sam Medouni been arrested,

but so had his partner, Sabrina Kouider.

Within 36 hours of the discovery of Sophie Lionnet's body

on the bonfire, both had been charged with murder.

It is definitely an astonishing thing to happen,

especially in Southfields.

The whole community was very taken aback and shocked.

Completely shocking.

We couldn't understand what was going on. It just seemed bizarre.

Really weird.

For months, Sophie had suffered appalling

abuse at the hands of her glamorous employer.

She actually started to cry and then I had to ask her what happened

and that point, she said Sabrina beat her.

Abuse that would end in a murder trial,

described by the judge as stranger than fiction.

I've been a reporter for 20 years and this is the most bizarre

and also, one of the most tragic cases.

On 20th September 2017, firemen discovered

a body on a bonfire in a suburban garden in South London.

A man and woman have been arrested on suspicion of murder after

a body was found in a garden in Southfields.

It soon became clear that the remains were those

of Sophie Lionnet, a 21-year-old nanny

working for mother of two Sabrina Kouider and her partner,

Ouissem, or Sam, Medouni.

Kouider and Medouni had lived in the rented ground floor

flat in Southfields since 2013.

They appeared to be a successful and glamorous young couple.

Kouider was a fashion designer, Medouni a financial analyst.

Local chip shop owner Michael Croner immediately liked them.

Fish and chips?

We call him Sam, that was the name he actually introduced himself,

saying, "I'm Sam."

And then, he introduced me to Sabrina.

She was very polite, soft-spoken. She was very glamorous.

Every time I see her, she's well-dressed.

But Kouider had a dark side, she was erratic, volatile,

and prone to mood swings,

and had a delusional obsession with her celebrity ex-boyfriend

Mark Walton, founding member of the Irish boyband Boyzone.

Walton and Kouider had a passionate and turbulent relationship.

They separated in 2013,

but Kouider became obsessed with and fixated by him.

It goes back about five years,

when Sabrina Kouider stopped going out with Mark Walton.

She appeared to him to be a volatile character, prone to mood swings,

but she also had something of a hold over him.

She was prone to outbursts, to shouting at random

people in the street and acting in a strange and volatile manner.

They had an acrimonious split, she left and he didn't know why.

At the murder trial, it emerged that Mark Walton had helped Kouider

financially by paying the first few months' rent on her Southfields

flat, but when he stopped supporting her, Kouider became enraged.

When the relationship between Kouider and Mark Walton broke down,

I think that was the catalyst

for all of the things that happened subsequently.

She didn't take the breakdown well.

She wouldn't have taken the breakdown well.

It's the kind of person that she is.

And she became fixated on either getting him back, getting control

back over him, or, if she couldn't do that, getting revenge.

Not long after the break-up,

Kouider started making serious allegations about Walton.

The court heard she claimed he was stalking her,

that he'd harmed her family.

All the allegations she made about him were totally untrue.

Sabrina Kouider got it in her head that she was stalking her, she said

that he was controlling her with black magic and all sorts of things.

So the background to the murder goes back a long, long way.

Well before they even met Sophie Lionnet.

It was heard in court that Kouider made more than 20 calls to police

and social services about Mark Walton.

In every case, the police concluded the allegations were not true,

that Kouider was a fantasist.

She even receive the police caution for posting defamatory

statements about him online.

No-one knows why Kouider developed her obsession.

It would appeal that Kouider has certainly developed

a range of delusional thinking.

She certainly viewed the world in a different way,

her approach to relationships was very different.

It could be very impactful

in significant life events for her that might have changed her

approach to relationships, affected her self-identity and I think it's

more useful to think of Kouider from that trauma-informed perspective.

Kouider also had a dysfunctional relationship with

Sam Medouni, whom she had known since childhood.

And although he lived at her flat,

he would often disappear for months at a time.

They did seem odd.

The whole setup, working out who was related to whom,

it was all a bit strange.

She was hardly ever there, very glamorous.

He always wore a flat cap and looked very shabby.

You wouldn't put them together as a couple at all.

No-one really seemed to know them, as far as I was concerned.

They weren't sociable. No.

They didn't come to street parties,

they didn't sort of chat or introduce themselves.

They didn't want to be part of the community, which is quite

an unusual thing around here.

They didn't want to partake in anything.

Although the couple were thought somewhat strange by neighbours,

it was Kouider's behaviour in particular that stood out.

Sunny Patel remembers her causing a scene in his shop, following

a disagreement over a mobile phone voucher.

She was quite volatile and vocal in her mannerisms with this dispute.

It was always probably her way, or no way.

She called the police and two policewomen turned up, one of them

took Sabrina outside because she hadn't calmed down and then the

policewoman said to Sabrina, "Look, this gentleman hasn't done anything

"wrong, but he is making an effort

"to assist you and you're not appreciating that."

By December, a deluded and obsessed Kouider was about to welcome

a naive young nanny from France into her family.

Sophie Lionnet grew up in the village of Paron, in rural France.

It's a couple of hours' drive south of Paris.

She lived there with her mother and stepfather.

TRANSLATION: Sophie is a nice girl, always smiling, who loves life

and had a joy of living.

She was shy, yes.

We spoke very little, it was always necessary to tear

the words from her mouth, so that she could speak with us.

Sometimes, she chatted well with us, but she was a very shy girl.

Sophie studied early years child education at college.

Because she loved children and children always came to her,

so she chose to do this job.

Sophie found it difficult to get a childcare job locally,

so when a friend showed her an advert for a French-speaking

nanny to work with a family in London, she decided to apply.

TRANSLATION: She had never left France.

Her goal was not to go abroad to work,

but this opportunity would open doors for her to find work.

So she said to herself, that since I cannot get

work in France, I'm going to England because it would be temporary.

It would give her experience, which would help her find work in France.

Plus it would improve her English there.

In January 2016, just after her 20th birthday, she came to London

and started working for Kouider full time as her nanny.

When Sophie first arrived, obviously I didn't know who she was.

I can remember when she first asked for cigarettes,

I had to ask for her ID because she looked quite well under 18.

I think she was very, very shy and timid.

She was quite petite.

I don't think she had a social life at all.

I have never seen Sophie with anyone.

There are so many nannies round in Southfields, they are very happy,

they meet up on weekends, they even come to my restaurant.

They bring the kids. They're all grouped up.

They have a social life as well. But Sophie never had that.

From day one I knew her, she was by herself, or with the family.

We assumed she was just part of the family, just an aunt or a cousin,

a relative because she was with the children all the time.

The amount of hours, the time, the effort, the patience she had,

you could not pay someone to do what she did.

So it was a natural assumption that she was a member of the family.

Not the hired au pair.

For the first year or so,

no-one outside the family took much notice of Sophie.

As this home video filmed in the Southfields flat shows,

she seemed happy.

She spoke to the children, she could speak to them easily,

but with anyone else, she just seemed to be very withdrawn.

But Sophie did open up to Kouider's friend, Jolanta.

It was my dream to learn French and she offered for me

to help me with that.

I had a good chance to speak with Sophie and she told me

that she came to London to improve her English skills.

And she was planning September to come back to France

and to study something related with cinema.

It was her wish.

In the summer of 2017,

after Sophie had been with the family for 18 months, Kouider's

obsession with Mark Walton took another bizarre and twisted turn.

By now, he was living in Los Angeles and totally out of reach,

so Kouider transferred some of rage and frustration

onto her young nanny.

She exerted more control over her, stopping her from eating.

Whenever she comes, I offer her food.

She only has a portion of chips and a drink.

And she eats it so fast, the way she eats,

either she's not fed, or she's rushing back to work.

She was pulling down, you can see.

I used to see her with the same tops, same jeans,

and she never brushes her hair.

Kouider, who was now broke, didn't pay Sophie's wages.

When Sophie was offered part-time work by Jolanta to help out,

Kouider stopped all contact between them.

I was just knocking to the door and Sam opened the door and I asked

him or Sabrina is at home and he told me Sabrina is not at home. And

after that I heard her voice and I said, "Why are you lying

"to me? She is at home."

I think that Sophie was controlled by Sabrina.

She couldn't decide by herself where she can go

and I haven't even noticed that she had her own free time.

Not only was Kouider starving and isolating Sophie,

she was stopping her going home to France, even to visit her mother.

I had to ask Sophie a couple times, "How are you?"

And I can feel she had eyes very teary and suddenly, she started to

tell me, "My mum is not well, I need to go and see my mum."

I said, "If it is that, why don't you fly to France, and I can even

"buy you a ticket? When you are paid you can give me the money."

I offered that to her.

She didn't give me a positive answer, neither yes or neither no.

She was just nodding her head.

And I didn't want to push her on things.

Back in France, Sophie's mother had received texts and Facebook messages

from her daughter, saying she was unhappy and wanted to come home.

TRANSLATION: She sent me

a message saying she needed a little bit of money to finance her return.

So I deposited the money in her account as soon as I got my pay,

so she could buy her ticket to return.

Sophie's mother then received a two unexpected phone calls from

Kouider, in which she made some strange allegations

about her daughter.

Sabrina had told me she was keeping Sophie

because there were disagreements and problems she wanted to solve.

I said to Sabrina, "Listen, do your best to make her come home."

The situation between Kouider and Sophie was getting worse.

Kouider was making increasingly wild allegations about Sophie,

accusing her of stealing a diamond ring

and of plotting against the family.

She actually started to cry and then I had to ask her, "What happened?"

At that point, she said Sabrina beat her.

So I asked why, which I didn't want to, but I had to ask her why

and she said the way she said it,

"The butter fell off and Sabrina beat me."

All of this was raising alarms, you know, something is not right.

I said, "Sophie, if you want, I'll find you a job."

I even spoke to a friend of mine and he said send her immediately,

I can sort something out.

A couple of days after Michael made this offer of help, Kouider

stormed into the chip top, dragging a terrified Sophie with her.

I was just setting at my table chairs outside

and she started to scream at me, very loud.

And she didn't like Sophie speak and she was screaming at Sophie

in French, which I didn't understand nothing.

And then I knew this has got nothing to do with me.

So I said, "Sabrina, you have got to excuse me, I've got to go back and open my shop."

And I left them there and I walked away.

Michael suspected something was wrong.

But he could never in his wildest dreams imagine what Kouider

and Medouni were doing to Sophie behind closed doors.

Imagine yourself every day in a cage like an animal.

Or what they were planning to do with her next.

In September 2017, the body of French nanny Sophie Lionnet

was found burning on a bonfire in south London.

Mother of two Sabrina Kouider and her partner Ouissem Medouni

were arrested immediately and taken into police custody.

Six months later, their trial began at the Old Bailey, with both

defendants facing charges of murder.

The first time I saw Sabrina Kouider, I thought

she was very beautiful and very glamorous.

But also quite troubled. She looked indignant.

She looked at me, shook her head at me.

I think she almost enjoyed the interest in her.

I just thought, how dare you not be full of guilt or remorse

for what you've done?

Saying, "Tell them I didn't do it, I didn't murder anyone."

It was quite fraught.

We knew right then that she was going to be a difficult defendant.

My impression of Ouissem Medouni was that he was very much

the quieter one.

Silent, brooding even. A meek figure in the dock.

TRANSLATION: It was the first time I saw them. It hurt me

because the had taken my daughter.

They had broken everyone's heart

and all the hurt they had done to Sophie, I could not accept.

While both Kouider and Medouni admitted to perverting the course

of justice by burning Sophie's body, they both denied murder.

Both defendants had essentially the same defence, that the

other person did it. They both argued that they were asleep,

whilst the other person had carried out the murder.

While no-one knew exactly what had happened to cause Sophie's

death, the prosecution was to reveal a key piece of evidence, which

clearly showed the extreme cruelty she'd been subjected

to behind closed doors.

In the weeks before her death, Sophie had been

the victim of a series of brutal and violent interrogations.

Unbelievably, these sessions were recorded by Kouider

and Medouni on a mobile phone.

I will not leave you alone until you tell me the truth.

Is this clear? Do you understand?

These recorded interrogations were all centred around Kouider's

obsession with her ex-boyfriend, Mark Walton.

Kouider obviously couldn't get to Mark Walton,

because by then he was living in Los Angeles.

And she diverted all her anger and anxieties

and obsession on to Sophie.

And she got it into her head that Sophie Lionnet was working with

Mark Walton to spy on her and to wreck her life.

She concocted in her head a bizarre idea that there was a plot against

her and Medouni and so over time she began to question Sophie for many,

many hours on end about what exactly she thought had been going on.

Extracts of these interrogation tapes

were played to a shocked court.

You will not go back to France until you have told me the truth.

I'm going to spoil your life, as you have spoiled mine!

She started coming out with all these accusations about Sophie

meeting Mark Walton secretly and plotting against her.

What you were listening to was a quiet

and unassuming girl being harangued, threatened, and intimidated.

They said that she should be locked up for 40 years.

She was like a murderer... All of this was to make her confess.

Whether you don't speak or you don't speak at your trial,

you will do so. You will be jailed!

Kouider it was the one who was instigating this whole thing

and she was the one that was keeping control. That's very unusual.

In 95% of cases, it will be a man, especially in this type of case.

You better know that we will not let you go back

until we know the whole, whole truth, nothing but the truth!

I think Medouni probably would have been willing to do anything for her.

It's not even a case really of whether he believed what she was

saying, it's that he believed

he wanted to do something to please her.

The tapes contained evidence not only of verbal abuse

but violence which had become more and more extreme.

I think there were about eight and a half hours of interrogations

in the weeks leading up to Sophie's death,

and they got progressively worse.

There was evidence that Sabrina Kouider beat Sophie at least

three times, she beat her with an electrical cord and she pushed

and slapped her.

I'm going to kill you! OK? Be quick!

You can hear on the recordings, noises that sound like slaps,

although Sabrina said that they weren't her slapping Sophie.

But it did certainly sound like she was being physically abused.

Think carefully about 40 years in prison.

Close your eyes for one minute,

imagine yourself every day in a cage like an animal!

I couldn't sit through all of it because it was really too much.

Sophie's mother particularly struggled to contain her

emotions and at one point during this harrowing footage,

she broke down in tears and had to leave the room.

TRANSLATION: There are no words.

It is monstrous, it's moral harassment,

what they did.

I cannot stand it.

They destroyed the family.

They destroyed our life.

They hurt my daughter.

There really are no words to express how I feel.

On the 18th of September, after five weeks of interrogation,

Kouider and Medouni made a video recording of Sophie, as

they attempted to get her to confess to working with Mark Walton.

This is the last image of Sophie alive, taken from that recording.

They ground her down so much that, in the hours before her death, they

filmed her actually confessing to colluding with Mark Walton.

It was clearly, completely untrue.

It was a figment of Sabrina Kouider's imagination.

The worst part was seeing the image of Sophie Lionnet

after everything that had been done to her.

She looked emaciated, she looked completely broken.

When Sophie's body was discovered, it was

so badly burned it was impossible to know exactly how she died.

Although, it was clear from the postmortem that she had been

severely assaulted.

Sabrina Kouider said that she accepted that she'd pushed

Sophie around, but she denied being very violent towards her.

But Sophie had suffered four broken ribs

and a cracked sternum three days before her death

and on the night of her death, she had a broken jaw.

Kouider and Medouni weren't shying away from the fact that they

had put this young girl

through horrendous questioning for many, many hours.

Their case was that each of them

denied the murder that had taken place.

Sabrina said that it was all Medouni

and he had become absolutely enraged, that he got a pan of water

and a towel and was torturing her, demanding to know the truth.

Sophie had been held in the bath

and subjected to what can only be described as waterboarding.

Sabrina woke up in the night to find Sophie dead and said,

"What have you done?"

But Medouni said the complete opposite and said that he was asleep

when all this happened.

But crucially, the prosecution produced a witness that contradicted

both these stories.

One of the key pieces of evidence in the trial was from a third party,

a witness in the house, who had heard both Sabrina

and Sam in the bathroom with Sophie,

saying, "Breathe! Breathe!"

That was a critical piece of evidence because neither one

of the defendants was really telling the truth.

Also central to the prosecution's case was the fact that the

authorities weren't alerted to Sophie's death.

We know at some point they decided rather than to call the police or

an ambulance, to dispose of her body.

They built a bonfire in the garden by their French doors,

by the kitchen and put Sophie's body into a suitcase and lit the fire.

One of the neighbours called 999 and alerted the fire brigade to

a fire that was potentially out of control.

When the firefighters arrived,

they found Medouni was at the scene, apparently in control of the fire.

They insisted on putting the fire out

because they were concerned that it was a bit too close to the doors.

As one of them was putting the fire out, and stamping it out,

he realised that there was a body in the ashes.

I think he described seeing fingers, and limbs, and part of a nose.

It was very grisly.

He turned to his colleague and said, "There's a body in the bonfire."

Medouni, still trying to get away with it at that stage,

trying to explain away the body as the carcass of a sheep that

he'd bought at the market.

But it would have been obvious to the firefighters

when they started looking through the grisly remains that this

was not a sheep we were looking at.

It's clear from the evidence that we heard that

had the neighbour not alerted the authorities,

Kouider and Medouni could have got away with murder.

The gruesome evidence about the broken and despairing nanny being

beaten and tortured to death were difficult for anyone to sit through.

But for Sophie's mother, it was unbearable.

TRANSLATION: I do not understand why they took to Sophie, she who

was so sweet, so charming...

I mean, she's a young woman beginning her adult life.

It is a dream of all parents to see their children blossom in life.

There are no words to understand what they did.

Everybody has been saying that Sophie was very naive and it was

easy to manipulate her and I think that is true, but if we think that

the only people who get caught up in coercive control are those people

who we see as easy to manipulate, we would be making a big mistake.

Sophie behaved actually in the way that many, many people behave

when they are being controlled.

At the Old Bailey, after a gruelling 43 day trial,

the jury retired to decide if there was enough evidence to

convict Kouider and Medouni of murder.

But even now, neither defendant appeared to show any remorse.

Really, all that mattered to Medouni was Medouni and Kouider.

And no-one else counted.

And I think Sabrina was so wrapped up in herself and her own world

that Sophie really didn't matter and even throughout all

their evidence, in everything that they said to the jury, they never

once expressed any regret or sadness

that Sophie had lost her life.

21-year-old French nanny Sophie Lionnet was murdered after

being beaten and tortured by mother of two Sabrina Kouider

and her partner, Ouissem Medouni.

After a gruelling murder trial, where each defendant blamed the

other for her death,

the jury retired to consider the disturbing evidence.

We had all been waiting for days

for the jury to come back with their verdict.

It was a full court.

We were very conscious that Sophie's family were very nearby.

We were all rather on tenterhooks.

After 30 hours of deliberations, the jury returned their verdict.

When the verdict came in, Medouni just hung his head.

Both Ouissem Medouni and Sabrina Kouider were found guilty of murder.

Sabrina just started crying.

Sophie's mother, Catherine Devallonne, started crying as well.

TRANSLATION: It's inhuman, these acts of barbarism.

They never said a single word of truth, it was all lies

and contradictions.

They never looked at me once,

or apologised for the harm they had done to Sophie.

I do not understand what happened in their heads to get there.

Like Sophie's mother, many struggled to understand what had driven

Kouider and Medouni to such unbelievable cruelty.

Mr Dee Anand is a forensic psychologist,

specialising in understanding offender behaviour.

The intensity of the relationship between Medouni

and Kouider is of vital interest in this case.

It's certainly the case that Kouider have this delusional

belief about Mark Walton and Sophie's involvement.

Medouni has bought into this. Whether he's bought into this as a

form of delusional transfer or whether he did this as a result of

dependency on his relationship with Kouider is in question.

Kouider was the dominant person in the relationship,

but Medouni was there during most of the recordings

and chimed in occasionally to ask his own questions.

So, he was part and parcel of what Kouider was doing

and what she believed Sophie had done to her.

When they were interrogating Sophie, they were seeking to support

their own delusional way of thinking.

They were encouraging Sophie to confirm the delusions they had.

Sophie was quite vulnerable because she had no support network here.

She had nobody to go to.

So, she was a perfect person for Kouider to manipulate.

I think Kouider was so convinced by her delusions

and Medouni also buying into this

was convinced that these acts had occurred,

that there was so little Sophie could've done to appease them.

Now, whether she was murdered because the torture got out of hand,

or whether it was a deliberate, premeditated act is only something

that Kouider and Medouni themselves would know.

Sophie was never kept under lock

and key, but with the full extent of the torture she'd suffered now

revealed, one question remains, why hadn't she left?

She could have walked out, I don't know why she was stuck there.

She can come on to the street and tell help,

people would have helped her. People might often ask the question

when they hear of a domestically abusive relationship,

why hasn't that person left?

I'm sure some might be asking that question of Sophie.

We have to understand she would have felt trapped, both

psychologically and physically.

Her emotions would not have allowed her or permitted her to feel

that she had the strength of character to leave that household.

The things that Kouider had been threatening her with,

Sophie probably thought would happen.

She had been told she was a thief, she was a sexual abuser,

that she was working in cahoots with somebody else,

she would have been terrified that had

she even got to the airport, she would have been arrested.

Despite this, there is a sense of collective guilt in Southfields.

How did we not notice? It's unbelievable.

We would never have believed something like that could happen.

It's so incomprehensible to think that that happens.

Never mind so close to you. You just don't expect it.

We feel really guilty, that we didn't notice what was going on.

She was such a lovely girl and it's just a horrible, horrible thing

to have happened right in front of our eyes.

I feel guilty because we just wish we could have done something,

she wanted to go back to France and she only needed £20, or £25.

We would have given that to her.

I feel bad, I should have gone to the next level.

Either made a complaint... But that period was too short.

When that happened, I think it's the week I saw her.

After that, I never saw her.

Nobody thinks that this kind of thing is going on on their doorstep

and that's one of the things that helps abusers

and controlling people to do what they do.

It's because we all stand around on the outside,

thinking, well, it can't be that bad.

It's knocked our community, it really has.

We're completely devastated by it.

And it won't be forgotten.

When you know you can help somebody...

Sophie's mother hopes her daughter's death will

serve as a warning to other young nannies looking for work abroad.

TRANSLATION: I advise that parents go with her children to see

the house and to meet the employers.

If there is a problem, bring your children home, as soon as possible.

I'm a mother of two kids.

I think everyone has to be careful.

She was a bright person.

And it's so sad that in such a young age, she needed to finish her life.

More than two years after arriving to work in the UK as a nanny,

Sophie was finally returned home.

On the 6th of June 2018, she was laid to rest in France.

TRANSLATION: The murder of Sophie destroyed everything around us.

People don't understand. The family is very shocked.

Her dad is shocked. Her big sister too.

Her brother, who has just turned eight.

He wanted to come with me to England, to tell them

they had broken his heart.

And that they had broken Sophie's life.

They must be locked up.

These people have destroyed a whole family.

And all the people who loved Sophie.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media