A child dies every five days the aftermath of violence in France, according to a 2018 government study. So helping the little ones in pain was obvious to all the actors in this system set up at the Jean Leclaire hospital center, in Sarlat (Dordogne): the unit of pediatric center for children at risk (UAPED). The service, which opened on April 1, was inaugurated this Thursday, September 29, 2022.
– Lisa Guinic
The objective of the UAPEDs is to bring together the services of the gendarmes, the prosecution and health, within the same place – the hospital, being better known to the youngest, is also more comforting than the police station – to help collect the voice of the child victim. He may be old from 3 to 18 years old. Most of these miners know physical or sexual violencewhich can go as far as rape.
A hearing room on the pediatric floor
They are first received, with their companions, family or other relatives, in the reception and conviviality lounge, on the 3rd floor of the hospital, just after the classic pediatric ward. The investigating constable then receives only the child in the hearing room.
– Lisa Guinic
“A dome camera makes it possible to film from all angles and microphones to capture the hearing”, decrypts Marie-Pierre Delattaignant, senior health executive at the Sarlat hospital center. These recording elements are barely visible, concealed in white walls and ceiling. add to this a glass table in the middle of the roomthe room seems somewhat austere.
Neutral furniture
But there is a reason for that: the table “allows you to see the behavior of the person, a hand movement, which are sometimes just as revealing as comments that can be madecontinues the caregiver Marie-Pierre Delattaignant. That’s why this furniture, which may seem surprising, really is one of the important things about conducting auditions.”
– Lisa Guinic
The other particularity of this unit, judicial but located in the hospital, is behind the glass that makes up one wall of the hearing room. This third room is only accessible, via the corridor, to the investigating gendarmes: the technical room. Is there the famous registration system.
Recounting the violence suffered only once
“This machine makes it possible to film and hearsays senior executive Marie-Pierre Delattaignant. We’re separated from the next room (the audition room, Editor’s note) by one-way window, that is to say, on the other side, we do not guess what is happening in this room.” Anne Rousselot-Soulière, deputy director of the hospital, completes:
This device makes it possible to record and prevent the child from having to repeat the same painful story to several interlocutors, who are all legitimate, but who will hear the same story; whereas we can make the child say only once what happened to him.
“Institutional abuse” of the system
After the hearing, forensic examination can be performed, if necessary, directly on site by the medical personnel present. The goal of the UAPEDs is indeed there: to collect, in the same environment, once only, the word of the child victim, word always complicated to deliver. The hospital manager adds:
We will try not to add suffering to suffering and institutional abuse to the abuse of which the child has been the victim.
– Lisa Guinic
Anne Rousselot-Soulière is also delighted with the collaboration of the various public service departments. “I feel a lot of pride and professional satisfaction: it’s highly coordinated work between the gendarmerie, justice and Sarlat hospital”, she says. The Voix de l’Enfant association is also supporting the project, in particular through an investment of 8,000 euros.
18 minors auditioned since April
The Departmental Council of Dordogne also participated in the financing of the Sarladais UAPED, to the tune of just over 13,000 euros. Similarly, Sylvie Guedes, the prosecutor of Bergerac, welcomes the realization of this device, which has already allowed the hearing of 18 minors, within the hospital center of Sarlat, since its launch in April 2022. The magistrate hopes to see soon to bloom a UAPED at the Bergerac hospital center.
Another UAPED already exists in Périgueux since 2016. 65 other units exist in France. The government, through the voice of its Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, has set itself an objective ofone device of this type per department by the end of the year. National number 119 remains, moreover, a means of support for children in danger and victims of mistreatment.