It is 10:57 p.m. this evening of July 14, 2016. Anne Gourvès is running towards the Promenade des Anglais. She holds her flip-flops in her hand, and goes against the current of a human tide. Anne Gourvès is looking for her daughter, Amie. Twenty-four minutes earlier, at 10:33 p.m., the Nice Samu received a call. The first of a long evening. The first to announce the presence of several injured on the “Prom” because of a truck. A first call of which here is an extract, taken from a podcast in five episodes: “Nice attack, the children of July 14”.
Friend, 12 years old, “very happy”was invited to sleep “for the first time” at her best friend Sherine’s. It is with her that she goes to the fireworks of July 14, while Anne and the rest of the family attend from the heights of Nice. The air is mild, the atmosphere on the Promenade des Anglais is festive. At 10:22 p.m., the fireworks end. Ten minutes later, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel rushes on the “Prom” at full speed, lights off, with the 19-ton white refrigerated truck he has rented.
>> PODCAST. “Attack in Nice, the children of July 14”
On July 14, 2016, a truck drove down the Promenade des Anglais, killing 86 people, including 15 minors. As the trial begins, David Di Giacomo went to meet those whose lives have been turned upside down by this attack. A podcast in five episodes to listen to on franceinfo and the Radio France app.
At 10:48 p.m., Bouchra, Sherine’s mother, called Anne Gourvès: “She told me, word for word: ‘Anne, there was an attack on the Prom. Our daughters are injured, my son is dead’.” Anne Gourvès rushes onto the Promenade des Anglais. She remembers : “It’s unimaginable. What I see right away are corpses, covered by white tablecloths.” She ends up seeing Amie. Four people move her daughter, using a blanket, and put her in a police car. “I sit cross-legged next to it. Amie is injured, as if she had fallen off a bicycleshe says. She is not medicalized, so for me, it does not matter.” Amie died in the emergency room from internal bleeding. She is one of 15 children who died that night.
In all, 86 people lost their lives in the Nice attack. 434 were injured, including 42 children. Landy, 11, is one of them. “In life, when you get run over by a truck, you don’t have much chance of surviving. We were very lucky to survive”, she says in the podcast “Les enfants du 14-Juillet”, at the microphone of David Di Giacomo.
Among the injured adults is Stephanie Marton. She had come to the fireworks display with her five children. Injured in both knees, she was unable to return to work and now walks with a cane. “He took a part of our life from usconfides this mother. The aftermath was the hardest.”
The aftermath is reconstruction. Stéphanie and her children fled Nice, direction Cherbourg. She hoped that her children, and particularly her twins, Mathias and Lazard, would find in Normandy the tranquility they had lost in Nice. Today, more than six years after the attack, the two 13-year-olds are not going out alone. “As soon as I go out, I have an anxiety attacksays Mathias. The only times are when I have a date or when I have to take the dog out.” And his twin Lazard does not say anything else: “I can’t go outside alone. As soon as there is a white truck or something else, I get anxious.”
Following the advice of a psychiatrist, in 2017 the family adopted little Naïa, a young labrador. “Taking her out, playing with her outside, it made them want to go out a bit. The dog helped them a lot. Even if it’s not that yet, there’s something better”confides Stéphanie, a little relieved.
These symptoms of post-traumatic stress are not very surprising after such an attack, according to Professor Florence Askenazy. “In toddlers, we often note restlessness with hyperactive child profiles, who can have a lot of tantrums or have poor quality sleep”details the head of the child psychiatry service at Lenval hospital in Nice. “Among 6-12 year olds, we have rather seen a generalization of fears and anxieties of separation. And among the older ones, we have more symptoms of the type of addictions, endangerment, and sometimes suicidal crises.”
To deal with the specific consequences of post-traumatic stress in children – “This pretty term to say that it’s a mess in our head”as defined by Damien, a police officer in Nice on July 14, 2016 –, Professor Askenazy set up with her colleague, Doctor Michèle Battista, a new place: the Pediatric Assessment Center for Psychotrauma (CE2P), called the Simone-Veil Center. Located next to the Lenval hospital, on the Promenade des Anglais, where the truck began its murderous journey, it was born in 2017 and is still receiving new patients. “We must not neglect post-traumatic stressinsists Professor Askenazy. It is a severe psychological disease that has strong complications. It can ravage a life, including a child’s life.” More than 60% of 14th of July children suffer from post-traumatic stress, and half of them are affected by “symptoms with disorders, such as depression, addiction or suicide attempts”details the child psychiatrist.
It is Michèle Battista who guides us through the colorful and luminous corridors of the Simone-Veil center, unique in France. Since its opening in January 2017, the center has carried out 7,889 consultations. Today, 692 minors are still followed by the teams of Doctor Battista, and the requests do not stop arriving, while the trial of the attack approaches. She guides us to her office, which overlooks the sea and the Promenade des Anglais. Colored posters adorn the walls while a string of figurines brighten the edge of the window, located halfway up the wall so that the “Prom” is less visible. Green armchairs complete the furniture. Enveloping, protective, with their wide armrests. “They even carry their arms”, entrusted several parents to the child psychiatrist.
Because if the center takes care of the children, it also welcomes their parents for follow-up sessions. Family therapy is indeed part of the panoply of tools mobilized by medical teams. On July 14, 2016, “we attacked the family function, that is to say the link dad-mom-children”analyzes Florence Askenazy.
“If mum and dad are all day in their thoughts, living again, how are they going to be able to take care of the little three-year-old child who, too, is reviewing things? It’s our ability to be a parent that was attacked deeply.”
Florence Askenazyat franceinfo
The child remains of course at the center of the support, with a whole range of therapies: cognitive-behavioural, relaxation, psychomotricity… “The craziest story we’ve had is related to vaccinationrecalls Michèle Battista. A young girl had panic attacks every time we tried to approach her from the left [pour la vacciner]. And then, by dint of talking about it, she says to me: ‘I think I know’. We had never made the connection with the fact that the truck had grazed his left shoulder.”
This is how things are done and how anxieties are undone at CE2P: little by little, slowly unraveling the signs sent by the children’s bodies, who do not always manage to put into words what they feel. . And this is also where we learn to be satisfied with small victories: going back outside, seeing a white truck again without panicking, going back to school, getting out of isolation. Anxieties that have sometimes affected children who were only a few weeks old on July 14, 2016, or even who had not yet been born.
Telyan was 4 years old when the attack took place. With its large sœur, his little brother and his parents, they moved to Saint-Laurent-du-Var, west of Nice. Followed at the center, with all his siblings, Telyan managed to overcome his anxieties. He tells. “Me, it’s over, I’m no longer afraid of trucks, no longer afraid of the dark.”
Back to Michèle Battista’s office. In a corner drags a crate of toys: Playmobil, a police car, a helicopter, boats, an ambulance. “In every office, there are the same toys. They are the common thread of a possible story for these children.” If a story is started in an office from a toy, this toy must be everywhere, explains the child psychiatrist.
Little Louise, 7, arrives for a follow-up consultation, alongside her parents, Eva and David, and her little brother Marius. But it is above all her parents who have an appointment with the psychiatrist, they who still have so much trouble letting their daughter get away from them. During this evening of July 14, Louise was in her stroller. Her mother pushed her between two palm trees before throwing herself on her. His father, he ran to the opposite, beach side. Eva was convinced for long minutes that David was dead, and David still can’t forgive himself for having “abandoned” his family. “It is thanks to this separation that you are still together”underlines Michèle Battista, enveloping parental anxieties in her warm voice.
On the other side of the wall, Louise plays calmly. The anxiety attacks have lessened, her attention to school has returned at the same time as she has made new friends in the playground. “Louise is ready to live her little life as a child”, concludes Michèle Battista, with a smile on her face. At 7 years old, we sometimes move faster than the big ones.