Since 2017, the Alexis Danan de Bretagne association has applied the “Calliope” protocol in Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine). This Quebec method allows children to prepare for legal proceedings when they have been victims of sexual, psychological or physical violence. The Parquets of Ille-et-Vilaine could soon be formed and apply this method.
“We must allow the child to speak his truth”
“I understand a magistrate who says: “I do not have enough elements to continue”. But we have come to give some elements that will perhaps allow us to continue: the testimony of the child. It is crucial in the procedure. The child must be allowed to speak his truth, to assert himself, to say things, to be able to say to the one who hears him “I don’t understand, I didn’t lie, I’m sure of myself.” explains the president of the Alexis Danan de Bretagne association, Laurence Brunet-Jambu. Finally, this method aims during any confrontations that the child is able to say “yes, it was you who did this to me“to his attacker.
Sessions around happy events
It is necessary six to seven sessions to apply this protocol “we will look for three happy events, a football game, a birthday, a Christmas and we only work on these three happy events. ”continues the president.
Clément *, a 7-year-old Rennais has already attended five sessions with a volunteer from the association. For an hour, Marielle submits a questionnaire to him and deliberately slips errors into it to make sure that he will allow himself to contradict his interlocutor.
Here a memory of a Christmas morning: “Father Christmas had eaten all the pistachio cake when you came downstairs in the morning?“. Immediately the boy responds.”It wasn’t a pistachio cake, it was a yogurt cake!“This is precisely what the association volunteer was expecting: let him answer and explain his truth. Later, Marielle asks him rather firmly “can you focus a little more please?“suggesting that several of his answers were not the right ones. Without being dismantled, Clément maintains what he just said.
During hearings in the judicial framework, some answers provided by the children are incomplete. These are the keys to be as precise as possible that the Rennes association wants to give to these victims of verbal, physical or sexual violence: “investigators asked a little girl if she had seen daddy’s sex, and she said no. Through protocol, she was able to argue by saying “No! I didn’t see it because it happened under the quilt” Marielle completes. “Some had confrontations and it was magical, because behind it, we know, there were indictments. You have to trust the children and I think you have to trust the magistrates.“enthuses Laurence Brunet-Jambu.
* The first name has been changed