Facing your own violence, confronting it, understanding it and taming it in order to prevent it from happening again. It is to this work that several men sentenced by the courts for domestic violence, at the penitentiary center of Cergy (Val-d’Oise), in the Paris suburbs, have set themselves. According to the professionals who supervise them in discussion groups, these workshops are fundamental, bothhe acts of domestic violence against women have increased (+10% in 2020 compared to 2019 according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior). This year, 17,600 men were tried. Among them, 80% deny the facts and nearly 40% reoffend, according to the same report.
Florie Martin, the director of the documentary fight their violence, broadcast Wednesday, November 16 at 10:45 p.m. on the “Infrarouge” program (France 2), set up its cameras for three months in the integration and probation service of this penitentiary centre. Every week, ten men convicted of domestic violence are required to participate in a support group supervised by a psychologist, three integration counselors and a theater director. The goal: to prevent and avoid any recurrence.
We have to get these men out of denial first. This is one of the objectives of this protocol, which also uses theatrical scenarios. A way for these convicts to act out potentially conflicting situations, to provoke debate and make them think. The film, produced by journalist Mélissa Theuriau, also highlights the violence that some of these men suffered during their childhood and that they reproduce as adults. A way, often, to relieve themselves of responsibility, according to the professionals interviewed.
“There is a large propensity of perpetrators who have experienced either violence from their parents, or who have witnessed or even suffered violence from parents between them”, confirms in the documentary Françoise Lescoët, prison counselor for integration. “Some have told us that they have been victims – and this happens frequently – of intra-family sexual violence. 30 to 40% at least of those we have seen.”
However, the past of these violent men should in no way obscure their responsibility for the brutality they inflict. They often seek causes external to themselves: it is the fault of their partner, of alcohol, of their childhood. “It would be tempting to start working on the catastrophic or traumatic history of these subjects, which would create a ‘screen’, where our objective is to put them to work on the choice they have made to resort to violence”, confides in the documentary the psychologist Linda Tromeleue.
The documentary manages to capture the will displayed by some to change and the awareness of the devastation that their violence causes. In recent years, several support centers for perpetrators of domestic violence have emerged in France, in particular following the Grenelle on domestic violence, in 2019.
The documentary fight their violence, directed by Florie Martin and produced by Mélissa Theuriau, is broadcast as part of the program “Infrared”, Wednesday, November 16 at 10:45 p.m. on France 2.