With regard to sexual violence, “testifying in the press is never a choice of comfort”, reacts Marine Turchi, journalist at Mediapart and author of Lack of evidence: Investigation of justice in the face of #MeToo revelations (éditions du Seuil), guest of franceinfo on Friday 26 November. The show “Special Envoy” unveiled Thursday, November 25 evening on France 2 an investigation in which several women accuse Nicolas Hulot of sexual assault and rape. The former minister had announced, on the eve of the broadcast of the program, that he was definitely leaving public life.
franceinfo: One of the aspects that emerges from the “Special Envoy” investigation is that we understand that it sometimes takes a long time for victims to express themselves.
Marine Turchi: We know now, with these cases which are documented in the press, it takes a long time for the victims to be able to speak. More often than not, they have spoken to certain confidants, but society still finds it difficult to listen to these testimonies, especially in front of someone of power. The question that obviously runs through all this media business, PPDA [Patrick Poivre d’Arvor], Nicolas Hulot or many others, it is the question of the possible abuse of power. This element must be taken into account. Some say “he was a friend of Chirac” or some say “he offered me a job at TF1 while putting his hand on my thigh”. We have to ask ourselves who has the power, what levers this person has in hand and what use she makes of it in relation to these women. There is also the question of how old these women were. What is moving today is that we are starting to hear them and some agree to testify in a non-anonymous way. You should know that testifying in the press is never a choice of comfort. In general, it is to unblock a situation, to make it possible to testify in solidarity with other victims, sometimes to make sure that it also stops. It is never a choice of comfort, unlike the cliché that is often conveyed.
The decision to speak, is it also to say to oneself “I do not speak only for myself, I also speak for the other victims”?
Yes, this is something that we journalists who investigate these cases of sexual violence see a lot. Contrary to the cliché of the victim who would arrive vengeful, drooling on her lips, with the key testimony in hand and the idea of revenge. We see that in fact, the driving force, often, is to want it to stop, for it not to happen to others or to want to testify out of solidarity with other victims. I think it’s important to remember that, contrary to clichés, it’s often out of solidarity.
From a legal point of view, there is sometimes prescription, does that mean that justice can do nothing?
The practice for a few years in the various public prosecutors of France is to investigate all the same when the facts are a priori prescribed. On the one hand, because it is already necessary to verify whether the facts are well prescribed, this is not always obvious, as we saw in the Denis Baupin case. On the other hand, it also makes it possible not to close the door to the complainants, to say “we will hear you, we will hear the respondent.” Sometimes there is going to be a confrontation that is going to be organized between the two. But we’re not going to say “Move along, nothing to see”, we will still hear them. A certain number of lawyers and magistrates say that it is necessary to consider alternatives to penal responses, sometimes forms of legal meetings which can give rise to a dialogue and an acknowledgment of the facts. We must ask the main stakeholders what they expect in relation to this sexual violence and in relation to justice. Some want a prison sentence, but others simply want an acknowledgment of the facts, which is not only an acknowledgment of the facts of the aggressor, but also of the entourage, the company, the family.