As a masked man pulled Kim Kardashian toward him in a Paris hotel room, she said a silent prayer.
She was wearing only a bathrobe. Her hands were zip-tied and her mouth was taped.
“I was certain that was the moment that he was going to rape me,” she told a court in Paris on Tuesday. “I absolutely did think I was going to die.”
When she first heard footsteps thundering up the stairs that night, Ms Kardashian said she thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning from a night out. “Hello? Hello? Who is it?” she called. Moments later, her door flew open.
She begged the robbers: “I have babies,” she said. One replied that she would be all right if she stayed quiet.
The last time Ms Kardashian saw the men that police say robbed her, she was bound at gunpoint and locked in a marble bathroom while masked assailants stole more than $6 million in jewellery. On Tuesday, nearly a decade later, she faced them again from the witness stand.
Her tearful testimony marked the emotional climax of a trial that has gripped France and reignited global debates about the cost of fame and what it means to live – and nearly die – in public.
At the time of the robbery, Ms Kardashian was one of the most recognised women on the planet – a fashion icon, reality star, and business mogul. She had mastered a new kind of celebrity: one broadcast in real time, post by post, to millions of followers.
But in the early hours of October 3, 2016, that visibility became a weapon against her.
The robbery marked a turning point for Ms Kardashian, and for how the world understood vulnerability in the digital age.
Dressed in black, Ms Kardashian on Tuesday stood across from her mother, Kris Jenner, in the heavily secured courtroom. Her voice trembled as she thanked French authorities for “allowing me to share my truth”.
She described how the attackers arrived at her hotel disguised as police officers, dragging the concierge upstairs in handcuffs. “I thought it was some sort of terrorist attack,” she said.
They tied her hands, dragged her toward the bathtub and pointed a gun at her temple. One gestured at her diamond ring. “He said, ‘Ring! Ring!’ and he pointed to his hand,” she recalled.
Ms Kardashian broke down in tears as she gave evidence.
French prosecutors say the assailants, most in their 60s and 70s, were part of a seasoned criminal ring that tracked Ms Kardashian’s movements through her Instagram posts.
Two of the defendants have admitted being at the scene. One claims he did not know who she was.
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has since died. Another was excused due to illness. The French press dubbed the group les papys braqueurs (“the grandpa robbers”), but prosecutors insist they were no harmless retirees.
Ms Kardashian, who once shared nearly every moment of her life online, later acknowledged the dangers of that hyper-visibility.
“People were watching,” she said in a 2021 interview. “They knew what I had. They knew where I was.”
Earlier in the trial, Ms Kardashian’s childhood friend and then stylist, Simone Harouche, testified that she had been sleeping downstairs when the robbery began. She heard Ms Kardashian’s voice: “‘I have babies and I need to live.’ That is what she kept on saying, ‘Take everything. I need to live.’”
Ms Kardashian, she said, was “screaming with terror in her voice”.
Ms Harouche locked herself in the bathroom and texted Kourtney Kardashian and the bodyguard: “Something is very wrong.” Later, she heard Ms Kardashian hopping down the stairs with her ankles still bound. “She was beside herself,” Harouche said. “She just was screaming.”
Ms Harouche testified that the robbery “forever” changed her friend’s sense of 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.”
Judge David De Pas asked whether Ms Kardashian had made herself a target by posting photos of herself with “jewels of great value”. Ms Harouche rejected the premise. “Just because a woman wears jewellery, that doesn’t make her a target,” she said. “That’s like saying that because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.”
In the days after the robbery, critics like designer Karl Lagerfeld questioned whether Ms Kardashian had shared too much. But as the details emerged, public sentiment began to shift.
In the aftermath, Ms Kardashian withdrew from public life. She developed anxiety and symptoms of agoraphobia.
“I hated to go out,” she said. “I didn’t want anybody to know where I was … I just had such anxiety.”
Ms Kardashian’s lawyers say she is “particularly grateful” to French authorities – and ready to confront those who attacked her.
