She started by telling a story.
In
Icon of French cinema
, a brilliant and bittersweet series broadcast on Arte in December, Judith Godrèche portrays herself as an actress attempting her comeback.
And shows, through flashbacks, how, as a teenager, she began her career by starting a relationship with a director much older than her.
Then on January 8, Judith Godrèche revealed the name of the latter, first on social networks then in an interview with
Quotidien
: Benoît Jacquot, director of Les
Mendiants
, released in 1988. Then on February 6, 2024, Judith Godrèche brought complaint.
And two days later, detailed the most sordid episodes of their history
in an interview given to France Inter
,
with palpable emotion in his voice.
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Also read “The little girl in me can no longer keep silent about this name”: Judith Godrèche denounces the “control” of director Benoît Jacquot during her adolescence
Judith Godrèche's words are all the more striking as we see them unfold "in real time", before our eyes, in stages.
A mechanism that Muriel Salmona analyzes for us, psychiatrist, president of the Traumatic Memory and Victimology association, and author of The
Black Book of Sexual Violence (1).
Madame Figaro.-
What was your feeling when listening to Judith Godrèche's testimony on France Inter?
Muriel Salmona.-
I found it very strong and very fair, compared to what I know of these situations.
Judith Godrèche is very courageous.
I think she really wants to protect anyone who may find themselves in this situation.
She talks about everything she felt, about this colonization she suffered, which locks up the victims.
It is very difficult to get out of it.
What is certain is that it is very liberating for her but also for many, many people who have been through it.
This speaking out was first done through the series she produced,
Icon of French Cinema
.
How can fiction help express trauma?
Fiction allows you to step outside yourself, to look at a character who is experiencing the same thing as you.
This is what we continually do in the treatment of victims of domestic violence.
Very quickly, patients are told: “If your best friend told you what you just told me, what would you think?
Would you find that normal?
Would you think she is responsible for what happened to her?”
The fact of setting up a fictional character allows us to have this absolutely necessary distance to escape from this famous traumatic memory due to the scenario established by the aggressor, the way he looked at us and which makes us feel guilty: we tells himself that we have no legitimacy, that denouncing things will be a betrayal, a way of not recognizing his importance, everything he has contributed.
There is always a notion of domination.
Distance helps us realize this.
Also read “I found myself in his bed, being his child wife”: the chilling revelations of Judith Godrèche about Benoît Jacquot, then about Jacques Doillon
How do you explain this word which emerges in stages?
This is always a bit like how it happens, provided, of course, that you are heard.
Because it's always the same problem: the victims speak, but their words are often diverted, turned against them, they are attacked.
Judith Godrèche first became aware of the legitimacy of her words.
Then when we started, we told ourselves that we had to see it through to the end.
Explain in detail what happened, what is behind this violence, this staging of horror.
Judith Godrèche wants to tear the veil, to protect others, but also to ensure that this mystification no longer exists.
We can imagine the shock it must have been for her to discover this documentary by Gérard Miller (in 2011, the psychoanalyst, himself accused of sexual assault, questioned Benoît Jacquot about his relationship with the actress in a film entitled
The tricks of desire
,
Editor’s note
).
To see that all of this is predation: everything is intentional, constructed to control, to exploit the other.
Dismantling these cogs really becomes a necessity.
Then the more she hears herself talking, the more things become obvious.
One of the problems with psychological, physical and sexual violence is that it creates very significant trauma, which will put you in a state of dissociation.
Predators can continue to do whatever they want without you feeling anything.
This emotional anesthesia is a brain-saving process that disconnects emotions so that one can survive.
We develop a sort of tolerance to the worst situations, because we don't feel them, we are spectators.
They therefore become more difficult to denounce.
In the case of Judith Godrèche, it is impressive to see how her emotion is increasingly palpable.
She frees her, and takes the full measure of the horror, of what it could have been for her, and what it can be, currently, for young girls and all these teenagers who are going through the same thing.
This explains why victims often speak a long time after the events...
Yes, it's because it takes a lot of time to be able to emerge from a format that lasted for many years.
It's a bit like being in a total fog, from which we are emerging little by little.
Theoretically, this is where specialized trauma care is necessary.
But even so, it takes years to regain power, to recover one's "self".
Judith Godrèche says that reading
Consent
, by Vanessa Springora, was a trigger:
in an open letter to her daughter, published in
Le Monde
, she speaks of “tachycardia”, of a “desire to vomit, the temperature dropping ".
How can we explain these physical sensations?
When we begin to emerge from dissociation, from control, everything we have felt emerges.
What Judith Godrèche describes, the disgust of the other's body, everything it has imposed, the fear, the pain, all of that resurfaces.
It's exactly the same as reflux from anesthesia.
When you have had a tooth pulled, once the anesthetics no longer work, the pain returns.
We didn't feel it, even though it really existed.
But the traumatic memory that emerges is always very positive.
This means that the person is really getting out of this system of control.
Also read “He asks me to do the take again without wearing panties”: several actresses give their damning testimony against Benoît Jacquot
How does speaking out publicly contribute to healing, to getting better?
It's complicated in terms of stress, exposure: normally, the key word in caring for traumatized people is that they are safe, protected.
There, Judith Godrèche exposes herself, but this puts her in a position to hear herself say certain things, and therefore to answer questions.
This is what we do during psychotherapy work, which allows us to create words about what we have experienced.
And it also allows you to participate in making things happen.
This is really the trajectory of most of my patients, and the sign that they are getting better and better: they are committed to ensuring that this never happens again.
What Judith Godrèche does is a gift.
It’s very brave and it’s really important.
(1)
The Black Book of Sexual Violence
, Dunod, 2022.