the long work of accompaniment to “put them back on the tracks of childhood”

The first time we saw Samy, with his big shy smile and his messy hair, was in the arms of his mother, in the spring of 2022, in the Roj camp, in northeastern Syria. Samy had never known France, he was born in these territories at war six years ago, but he dreamed of going to school in the Republic, and recited poems by Victor Hugo that his mother had taught him. , in a makeshift tent in the middle of the desert.

Samy, 6, landed in France on July 5, during the first massive repatriation operation from the Syrian camps. Three hundred children have already returned to France, taken care of by the authorities, among them, two thirds were under 10 years old. They are still a hundred French children detained in the camps of North-East Syria. Their family is awaiting a fourth repatriation.

For the children who have returned, the path is tortuous, but they are adapting. On the military plane, Samy’s mother had explained to him that she would go to prison, she had to pay, he would go to foster care. The separation was difficult on arrival at Villacoublay airport. “Do it quickly, but gently”, difficult to apply the instructions of the authorities. Samy was inconsolable.

“A wise and intelligent boy”

The little boy was placed in foster care, he made his first comeback. But it took several months before he met his family, his mother’s sister, his aunt Inès, his uncle and his cousins. Since then, the little boy has spent a few weekends with them, and recently school holidays. A sweet and comfortable boy who loves to have fun confides Inès: “He’s a very wise boy, he’s very intelligent, very playful, he really likes superheroes, she says. He has friends at school, he is not late, because his mother taught him the fundamentals, and he is very happy to have this family cocoon.

The only downside is the separation from his mother, imprisoned hundreds of kilometers away. “He didn’t see him for almost eight months, explains his aunt, even the mistress had noticed that he was a little sad, and now it’s better since he started seeing her regularly. The fact of knowing where she is, of having kissed her, of having cuddled her, all that reassures her a lot. And it’s surprising how resilient he is.”. Inès hopes, within a few months, to be able to obtain final custody of her nephew, she has already built a bed in her children’s room.

Psychological support

Like Samy, a hundred children returning from the camps went to the psychiatric department of the Avicenne hospital in Seine-Saint-Denis. In his office covered with drawings and invaded by toys, the child psychiatrist Nicolas Bosc follows around fifty children on a daily basis. The majority are under 10 years old. The doctor welcomes them with small plastic animals in a bucket: “Yes, it’s true that there are a lot of tigers on top. They were the last ones we usedexplains the doctor. Very often they use lions, tigers, small dinosaurs, crocodiles, gorillas, rhinos, leopards. These are animals that are often taken to play the threat, to play the attack. It’s therapeutic play. And we are going to direct the scenario. And there, they will understand that we can protect the child, that we can call on adults, that we can call on the doctor, that we can call on educators and that we can put the child safe. They will understand that we can punish those who want harm, that we can put them away.”

There are also drawing sessions, which say a lot about trauma. “It’s going to be weapons, it’s going to be things they’ve seen. It can also be monsters, continues Nicolas Bosc. Look at this one, we have completely scribbled hair, with a lot of aggressiveness in the gesture, completely red eyes, very very sharp, very colored teeth. So we see that it’s emotionally charged, and visually, it’s scary.”

Separation trauma

Taking care of these children also means erasing the fantasy around these “little ghosts”. “These are children who must be helped, ensures the child psychiatrist. They are especially small and if they are taken care of, then we will be able to put them back on the tracks of childhood. We have a lot of great victories. When you see a child who manages to put words to a course and who manages to understand why his parents left, that his parents made a mistake, qWhen we hear that he is moving forward, that he is managing to socialize better, that things are going well at school and in the host family, we say to ourselves that the work we have all done is paying off.

But for the lawyers of these children the support is clearly insufficient. The criminal lawyer Marie Dosé, who accompanies more than 50 children returning from the zone, observes that in the chambers of the judges for children, the separation from the mother is sometimes more traumatic than what they experienced in the camps: “These children are first victims of the choice of their parentsshe acknowledges, but they are victims of a country that left them for four years.”

“The only figure of humanity and affection that these children have met is the mother, and obviously their arrival in France sounds the death knell for a close relationship that they find it difficult to bury.”

Marie Dosé, lawyer

at franceinfo

For the lawyer, “that’s why you have to take children regularly to detention, to secure the child on the incarceration of his mother and retrace his story with her”. Marie Dosé recalls that in Belgium, Finland or Denmark, mothers see their children again a few days after their repatriation, as well as their extended family, aunts, grandparents. In Germany, they are even immediately placed with their family and the link with their mother is maintained on a daily basis.