Once the word "incest" has been released, often causing the bewilderment of his interlocutor, that of "silence" follows him narrowly, as he has enveloped him for years.
Camille Kouchner's book published this week, "La Familia Grande", which depicts the abuse committed by political scientist Olivier Duhamel on her then adolescent twin brother, was for this lawyer the opportunity to "bear witness to incest, to show that it lasts for years and that it is very, very difficult to get rid of the silence ”.
This omerta, this mechanism which forces the young victim to keep quiet about what she endures within the family unit, may have been shaped by fathers or stepfathers, brothers, grandfathers, uncles ..., by incestuous women too, before being employed, too often, by the rest of the family.
“In this law of silence, we make the victims feel illegitimate to speak the truth.
There is a total denial of the seriousness of the acts and of the consequences that were imposed on them, ”says Muriel Salmona, psychiatrist specializing in sexual violence.
"He told me he was going to go to jail if I spoke"
Sabrina, 38, who speaks of the perpetrator of her abuse as her "executioner", can attest to this.
“He told me that he was going to go to jail if I spoke and that I was going to return to my country.
So I was just waiting for him to do what he had to do and for it to pass, ”she recalls of her uncle, now deceased, who raised her from her 2 years to her 17 years. , when she left Algeria for France for treatment.
“I was the most vulnerable.
He managed to ensure that there was no one at home… ”sighs Sabrina, who then lived in the Paris suburbs with her uncle's wife and seven children.
She depicts scenes of rape and touching still very vivid in her mind and remains convinced that there were other victims.
“There was a double grip of his wife and him.
I was a terrified child, ”she confides.
Because her aunt knew, without ever having tried to help her, assures the thirty-something.
“When I was 9 years old, she would tell me
why are you swelling your breasts?
Do you like people to watch you?
She thought I had stolen her husband… ”One day, the latter asked her the question head on.
“I wanted her to buy me shoes.
She said
Ok, but on one condition, tell me if he touches you
?
Sabrina says.
I denied it, but from then on I knew she knew… ”
When she was 17, this family refused to continue to host her and Sabrina finally found some semblance of freedom in a home.
But the omerta continues.
“I grew up with these memories, I kept it to myself until I was 36.
This silence, this mother decided to burst it two years ago, but obstacles remain.
She "told everything" to a cousin in 2018, who has since said nothing to the rest of the family.
So Sabrina decided to cut ties, after having continued for over 20 years to nurture a painful relationship with them.
She also prefers to remain silent with her own parents, in order to "preserve" them.
One in 10 French people say they have been a victim of incest
How to explain that the secrecy continues, even after the death of the aggressor?
Psychiatrist Muriel Salmona speaks of a "hyper-dominant, very hierarchical and all-powerful system, which wins the support of most of the family or the entourage, because it is the law of the strongest".
“Out of cowardice, some side with the aggressor and those who will despise the victim are valued,” she continues.
After death, this influence remains fully integrated.
Some have the strength to admit their mistakes, but it depends on the intensity of the collaboration with the abuser's system.
"
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"It takes monstrous courage": victims of sexual violence now testify with their faces uncovered
Like Sabrina, one in 10 French people say they have been a victim of incest in their younger years, a recent Ipsos survey reveals.
The thirty messages received in a handful of hours in the context of this article are the most evocative of the illustrations.
Most of these victims, a few of whom have taken legal action against their attacker, say they want to "break this law of silence" and "get things done".
Sabrina, like many of them, endured for years the collateral effects of this violence and this unspoken.
La Francilienne says she is still addicted to painkillers today, "to forget".
“If I exploded at 36, it was because I was sinking, I was crying at work, I was still on sick leave and I understood that I needed to talk.
Her GP was instrumental in getting her back on her feet, as well as the Libra ton Porc movement, and the revelations of the sexual abuse suffered by Flavie Flament, which pushed her to speak out.
“The Duhamel affair awakens nightmares, however concedes this integration counselor.
Yesterday I made one so real I woke up crying.
I am not delivered from my demons, we live with it every day… ”
"She tells me that she has known for a very long time"
Suicide attempts, anorexia, bulimia… Claire-Aurélie Veraquin, a 43-year-old teacher, experienced the same horrors as those depicted by these victims of all ages and social backgrounds.
Born "to a father who was a truck driver and a mother in a factory", she grew up "locked in secret".
He abused his two daughters and allegedly tried to do the same with his son.
If Claire-Aurélie Veraquin suffers from partial amnesia, making it difficult for her to reconstitute the abuse, with "new nightmares, which have arisen for 3 or 4 years", she remembers having tried when she was 10 years old to get out of this omerta.
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The eldest then confides in her older cousin, who advises her to talk to her mother.
“Which I did in the next second.
But that's where the real silence has settled, replays the president of the association for the protection of victims of incest, the children of Tamar.
She said to me:
I will manage
.
But nothing happened until I was 15, when I started trying to get rid of this hold… ”One day, her father joined her in his shower as usual,“ and there, I tell him that it is no longer possible to do what we do, because I am with a boy.
Then he announces to me that he is not my real father, as if to justify his love for me.
"
His mother then extends her hand to him, but the story does not come out of the family bubble.
“She tells me she has known for a very long time.
That she had noticed that he had erections in front of me, ”explains the teacher, who readily evokes an“ incestuous couple ”.
Three years later the man died, sweeping away for Claire-Aurélie Veraquin all hope of seeing his attacker condemned.
It will take another ten years, made of self-destruction, for it to realize.
“It took me a long time to accept that my father raped me.
We naturally put ourselves into mechanisms of silence, which is why it is difficult to explain it to the outside, ”this mother of two daughters analyzes today.
The gear of shame and guilt
Like Sabrina, she recently cut ties with her mother and siblings and says she has managed to regain her footing through therapy.
With ups and downs.
“Until three years ago, I was a living dead, even today I'm in a phase where I'm not very fit.
"Its progress is usual, among victims of incest, enlightens psychiatrist Muriel Salmona:" Around 40 years, you are no longer dependent on your family, you build your own history and you can then free yourself from this influence.
"
Laurent Boyet, 49, also took years to be able to analyze this trying torpor, "in which we take refuge, because we say to ourselves that it protects us".
“My brother said to me,
All brothers do this
.
When we are little, we first say to ourselves that it is normal.
Then there is the gear of shame and there is this feeling of guilt.
We say to ourselves:
now how are we going to look at me when I speak
?
», Unrolls this inhabitant of Perpignan, raped from his 6 to 9 years by his" hero "of the time, his brother of 10 years his elder, when the latter returned from the boarding school.
“From the moment we put the gears into silence we are screwed, we condition ourselves in a logic not to respond and then we are afraid of being excluded from the family.
We know we're going to say something that will cause an earthquake, ”he adds.
This earthquake, he took 30 years to decide to initiate it.
“Silence is not a refuge.
He ends up asphyxiating us ”
“To speak is to jump into the void, describes Laurent Boyet today.
Saying in front of everyone that
I was raped
is even more difficult when you are a man.
We say to ourselves,
How are people going to react?
But according to him, time was running out.
“I was blowing up my relationship, for nothing, because I imagined that I had no right to be happy.
So he writes a letter to his wife to get rid of his heavy secret.
Then to his mother.
And finally, to the rest of his family, except his brother, before writing a book (“All the brothers do like that…”, published by France Loisirs) on his story, which “completely got him out of anger”.
But another jolt followed.
"I was expecting all the possible reactions from my mother, except for what she said to me,
I believe you because I always suspected it
."
One of her sisters also turned her back on her.
A painful illustration of this long omerta, when he knows to have sent all the signals of the abused child.
“This is the second most catastrophic rape, when I realized that it would not stop.
From there, I shut myself up.
I didn't play with anyone anymore… I died at 6 years old.
"
Today, man perceives things differently.
“I've spent my life wondering but why?
Now I say to myself:
It happened to me and what am I going to do with it?
», Relates the father who created the association of aid victims of incest Les Papillons, offering children letter boxes in schools.
The 40-year-old now gives this advice: “The faster we speak, the faster we rebuild ourselves.
Contrary to popular belief, silence is not a refuge.
He ends up asphyxiating us, taking us away, even if we are afraid, the only way out is to talk.
"