The memory of the incest that she experienced as a child, Rebecca* took the full brunt of it decades later in 58 years old. “One morning at 6 a.m. I had a very distinct flash. A place, a specific place, and it wasn’t a dream“, she explains. But, when she reveals what she has suffered to the rest of her family, she does not get support: “It was very, very, very violent. The siblings who call us liars, that I had to stop saying nonsense about the family…”
>> Sexual violence against children: “The priority is to secure” the victims, intimates the co-president of the Ciivise
Rébecca wants today in her turn to release this word and to set up in Marseille, an association so that no one can close their eyes, to put an end to what she calls “The family complicity, the ‘Who says nothing, agrees’…” and to conclude simply: “If these people surround you, the work of reconstruction begins from then on.”
To rebuild and to feel supported also by justice: it is the opposite expressed by Sandra*, mother of a little girl 3 and a half years old, “Me, I had the impression that, basically, I was one more file“. One day, the child tells him that he is afraid of a man in the airy center. “She came back saying there was a gentleman in her closet, the wolf was there“, she says at the microphone of franceinfo.
Faced with this situation, Sandra asks for help from a friend who finds the right words. “As much to tell you that I fell from the clouds“, she confides, very moved.
“My daughter confessed to her that the gentleman woke her up during her nap and that, suddenly, he put his hand in her panties.”
There follows an obstacle course to file a complaint, which is denounced in his report the independent commission on child sexual abuse, which alerts on support for victims. Sandra was then told, first of all, that the person in charge of this file is on leave. “When do I have to wait for this lady to come back from vacation so that I can file a complaint?“, she gets annoyed. Sandra ends up being received, but we don’t believe her daughter’s story: “I felt like a liar. The gendarme clearly put pressure on me by asking me if I was not in love with that person. When you are a victim, no one believes you.“
It is through an association that Sandra learns, after five months of investigation, that her complaint is closed. “And I don’t want her to say to me later, ‘Mom didn’t do anything for me.’“She now hopes that the courts will agree to reopen the case. It is estimated that 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence each year.
*Names have been changed