← Explore all cases
Conviction Western occult and esoteric movements Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France · 2013

France: Thierry Tilly's decade-long occult domination of the Védrines family — conviction final

Request a correction or reply

Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

  • 2013-06-01

    Sentence increased to ten years.

  • 2014

    Rejected; final.

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

self-styled initiate claiming esoteric knowledge and a protective mission

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The family submitted to Tilly's claimed esoteric authority — belief in his occult knowledge and protective mission is what made a decade of confinement and dispossession unrefusable. A borderline record: the harms adjudicated are liberty and property, not sexual, and the authority claimed was occult-conspiratorial rather than religious-institutional; it is included because the coercion mechanism is precisely the criterion's, and flagged so the owner can revisit.

  • Other spiritual authority or belief
  • Threatened spiritual consequence
  • Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2013-06-01 · conviction; sentence increased on appeal; cassation rejected (final)

    French courts; Cour d'Appel de Bordeaux; Cour de Cassation. Thierry Tilly was convicted of abus de faiblesse, aggravated violence and aggravated sequestration for holding eleven members of the Védrines family, aged 16 to 89, under total psychological control in their château from 2001 to 2009 — posing as a secret initiate protecting them from an occult conspiracy — and extracting some €4.5 million. Sentenced to eight years in 2012, increased to ten on appeal in June 2013; his cassation appeal was rejected.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • claimed occult knowledge of a conspiracy threatening the family
  • total psychological control and isolation in their château
  • extraction of roughly €4.5 million

Cited record

Sources

national public broadcaster appellate disposition 'Affaire Tilly-Védrines: dix ans de prison confirmés', France Bleu / France Info (2013).

Reports the appellate increase to ten years and the case's facts.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis
https://www.francebleu.fr/ Corpus classification: national-public-broadcaster; evidentiary role: appellate-disposition. SHA-256 8cdf1205818facfb2e20580e840be201e852ca048104cd9fd9d8718373df7c4a
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

Named in this record? Request a correction, report a changed disposition, or submit a response.

Related record

Related cases · Western occult and esoteric movements

Browse all 12 Western occult and esoteric movements records