The story of little Maëlys, kidnapped and murdered in the summer of 2017, obviously upsets adults. The trial of Nordahl Lelandais has just concluded yesterday, Friday February 18, with the verdict of the Assize Court of Isère: life imprisonment for the assassin of Maëlys – the heaviest penalty available under our law. How can we help children who hear about this unusual case? The decryption of the psychoanalyst Claude Halmos
franceinfo: What can be the reactions of children who hear about this story and this trial? What should we tell them? How to help them?
Claude Halmos: The first thing to remember, as always, is that we are in a time when, even if parents would sometimes want to do so, it is impossible to hide the news from children: they can hear about it in all public places, and by their friends at school.
So, when something in this news is likely to upset them, you have to take the lead and talk to them about it. This allows what they will be able to learn next not to pick them up “cold”, as they say, and above all that they dare to come and ask the questions they will have to ask.
How can you talk about such a horrible story to a child?
We can simply tell him that something frightening has happened, and that he can hear about, and that we will explain it to him, so that he is aware. And then you have to tell him the facts. Without minimizing them, so that he doesn’t have the impression, if he hears about them outside, that some of them have been hidden from him; and without watering them down.
But remembering that a child always creates images from what is said to him. And that it is therefore necessary to avoid all the scabrous details, or even too precise, which could allow him to transform the information into a haunting film.
But, even without giving horrible details, isn’t there a risk that the child will start being afraid of monsters?
Crimes whose victims are children are obviously the most likely to arouse the most destabilizing fantasies in children. And that is also why they need to feel that their parents are there, by their side, to come between the horror and them, and to protect them from it.
But the best way to prevent a child from starting to believe in monsters is to explain to him that monsters only exist in movies and books, and not “for real”. But that real people can do, in real life, “for real” monstrous things.
Because when they were little, they weren’t taught what was allowed, what was forbidden, or not prevented from doing what was forbidden. Or because too many forbidden things have been done to them. It’s the reality: no one is born an assassin. And this also makes it possible to remind the child of the essential prohibitions (on murder, incest, sexuality between adults and children). And also caution, and the danger of following strangers.
All this is not easy for a child to hear, but if his parents surround him, and accompany him, he will not be traumatized. While it will always be by external revelations for which it will not have been prepared.