During an evening in a bar, in the middle of winter, in 2016 – before #MeToo therefore and before the election of Emmanuel Macron, Victoria, 23, toasts with other activists conquered by the ex-minister of l ‘Economy. One of them attacks him that evening. He lifts her dress in front of the others, then touches her chest. It is then for her the descent into hell.
“I twisted several times, I had a very bad feeling in a meeting, I even almost killed myself in the car one day, says Victoria. On a country road, I was in the moon, I drove on the left and a truck which arrived in front made flashes of headlights to me which woke me up anyway and I got back on my lane. But I was in such a bubble of anxiety, of stress!” She talks about it, to other activists, to executives of the En Marche movement, but nothing helps.
“I was seen by the rest of the people, including at head office level, as the bitch on duty.”
Victoria, ex-activist En Marche!at franceinfo
“It was known but in fact, nothing was happening, that is to say that I was screaming into the void. I wanted to have help, that we punish him, I wanted that ‘at least I’m protected!continues Victoria.
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Like other victims, it was only a few months later, when #MeToo broke out, that she managed to understand what she had suffered and to file a complaint. “I realized that the inappropriate gestures were sexual assaults and it allowed me to put my suffering into words and to realize that it was normal to go wrong.”
The years go by, the quinquennium too. Victoria, who has become a parliamentary collaborator, ends up also earning a symbolic 1 euro in civilian life. The LREM party, which became Renaissance, ended up opening a cell against this violence, in the wake of the Quatennens and Bayou affairs. “We could have done that earlier, says Victoria. At the time, I know I would have needed it but we weren’t ready yet.”
But “it’s never too late”, lance Victoria, who no longer resents the majority, even called Marlène Schiappa, who is piloting this cell, to give her advice: “train the referents in each department and that each Renaissance activist, when he hears a person who confides, is able to follow a protocol to bring the person to be able to be heard, listened to and protected.” Victoria now keeps her distance from politics. But she decided to get involved for women, in associations.