“This trial must be a way of understanding what we did or did not do in this country so as not to see what was going on. The trial is the quest for truth”hopes Anne Murris, whose daughter Camille died in the attack of July 14, 2016. Like 865 people, she filed a civil action. This is four times less than during the trial of the attacks of November 13, while the number of victims supported is substantially the same. 300 additional people should normally become civil parties at the start of the trial.
>> TESTIMONIALS. “I’m no longer afraid of trucks, I’m no longer afraid of the dark”: six years after the Nice attack, the children of July 14 bruised but alive
This is the case of David and Eva, who also made a file for their daughter Louise, 7 years old. “We open rights to Louise so we talked to her about it: ‘Dad and Mom, they made a decision for you.’
“You too have the right to financial assistance in relation to the fact that you were the victim of something that we should not have experienced. When you grow up, you will be able to afford studies, a car, this will be your money.”
Evato his daughter Louise, 7 years old
Like Louise, there are many children involved in this trial of the Nice attack, which claimed 86 victims, including 15 minors. At the Nice Pediatric Psychotrauma Assessment Center (CE2P), called the Simone-Veil Center, “we try to prepare an accompaniment in reality”. This unique center in France, created in 2017 to support child and family victims, still follows 692 minors.
Especially since, as explained by Professor Florence Askenazy, head of the child psychiatry department at Lenval Hospital, “Since we started talking about the trial, we are starting to have first-time consultants again. Currently, we must have two or three a week who call to make an appointment for children who have never seen anyone.” If he is “difficult to quantify” the number of minors who will attend the debate, Professor Askenazy assures us: “you have to prepare them”.
The Simone-Veil center teams have prepared several tools to support children remotely during the trial. In addition to the preparation of explanatory brochures on the trial and its role, the center has published an “emotions booklet”. “It’s a book with little icons of children so that everyone can project themselves”explains child psychiatrist Michèle Battista, who runs the center. “It contains stickers which are small flashes of the attack – a truck, a fire engine, the Lenval hospital… – so that we can know what could have rebooted the memory and that the children ‘allow to ask for help.
The CE2P will also conduct specific studies throughout the duration of the trial to analyze its impact on minors and their parents. The concentration, attention and memory of children under 7 will be scrutinized, while for 7-12 year olds, it will be sleep that will be studied. Finally, “we are going to have a study that will be offered to parents to see if they question themselves a little more, if they have the impression of being more stressed, more tense, less attentive to their children”, explains Florence Askenazy. This allows you to kill two birds with one stone: collecting data and “support them if this is the case”.