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Testimony: the obstacle course of a victim of insecurity in France

2022-02-22T13:57:50.160Z


FIGAROVOX/TRIBUNE - February 22 is the European Day of Victims. On this occasion, Judikael Hirel testifies to the violent physical attack he suffered in the Paris metro, and regrets the indifference towards the victims in France.


Judikael Hirel, victim of a physical assault in the Paris metro, is a journalist at Le Figaro.

In life, not everything can be solved by creating a toll-free number.

As the European Day of Victims is held on February 22, the Ministry of Justice is highlighting its action in the service of victims.

Left for dead in a subway hallway on November 13, 2017, I never heard of it.

We didn't choose it, but when we become a victim, we remain one.

For life.

In this partly parallel world where I now live, insecurity is not a feeling.

It's a bad memory at best, when you

're "lucky"

to survive his attack.

One in two French people would judge that insecurity has worsened in France over the past five years, according to a recent Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey.

Subjectively, I agree.

Otherwise how to explain that one ordinary evening, I came out of the metro on a stretcher, with 15 fractures to the head, my face crumbled from kicks by a drunken young man?

And why ?

For having dared to prevent him from attacking a young woman who had asked nothing of anyone, except to return home in peace.

No one else intervened for her... and no one for me either.

Such is the stark reality of everyday life in France.

I thought, apparently wrongly, that in a civilized society, defending a woman being assaulted was obvious.

Such is the

That was five years ago, and yet I think about it every morning as I shave, seeing the reflection of my new face in the mirror, held in place by a lace of titanium microplates under the skin.

Since then, every day is a chance, and I would do the same thing again, exactly, in the same circumstances.

But should that prevent me from judging that, behind the coldness of the statistics, the victims hardly count?

How many new victims since the day I didn't die?

They are countless.

How many will manage to move on, to rebuild themselves, or even to forget?

Not all of them, far from it.

In Ile-de-France alone, in 2020, no less than 54,856 people were victims of theft or violence within the RATP networks.

Unsurprisingly, the victims of aggression were mostly women (56%), and overwhelmingly of French nationality (78%).

Judikael Hirel

What is the alternative reality that I have been able to experience in five years of this victim itinerary?

First, that women are on the front line of insecurity, that statistics mean nothing.

I have not counted, since that evening, the number of women who have told me what happened to them.

Of these footsteps behind them, of these too long corridors in the evening, of these words, of these touches in the crowded trains, or even worse, of this omnipresent fear, which is an integral part of an already often busy daily life.

How can this be acceptable in 2022?

What politician can congratulate himself on his action when women are simply afraid to go to work and come back?

Beyond the facts committed within couples and families, how not to worry about the transition to

act in the streets and in the trains?

In Île-de-France alone, in 2020, no less than 54,856 people were victims of theft or violence within the RATP networks.

Unsurprisingly, the victims of aggression were mostly women (56%), and overwhelmingly of French nationality (78%).

The vast majority of these women were victims of sexual violence (94%) and more than a third of the victims were minors.

Read also“What is happening in other big cities has caught up with us”: diving in the heart of downtown Nantes, undermined by insecurity

To call ?

Report?

File a complaint?

The official figures in fact represent only a tiny part of the reality of the facts suffered by women here and today.

Why waste time filing a complaint that will generally not succeed?

For my part, I did it: the criminal case was closed in three months, and my attacker is living proof that impunity exists.

Has he assaulted, raped, killed since?

I don't know and that's my only regret: his freedom to do other wrongdoings.

We would have recorded in our country more than 350,000 attacks, only during the first half of 2021. That is the trifle of around 2,000 new victims per day.

We should found a party: it would quickly be the first in France!

And perhaps then we would be cared for as only, in general, our loved ones have done.

Relatives who are so many victims by proxy, moreover.

After being the victim of an attack, it seems to me that the outlook on things changes.

Also the relation to time.

Five years have passed since I died in a subway corridor.

But I'm still waiting for the slightest news from the Paris transport authority: apart from taking the names and numbers of the victims on the spot, whatever she says about it, she is an absent subscriber from the

assistance to victims.

Does it only feel responsible for what takes place on its platforms and in its corridors?

Posting a number of cameras and security guards on Twitter is not enough.

It is still necessary to act, before, during, but also after.

Worse still: the videos of the numerous assaults within Parisian transport are very often overwritten, destroyed, after 48 hours.

Or even before the police can request its requisition, following the complaint of the victim.

Would it be so complicated, legally and technically, to save the images of any observed aggression and make them available to the police?

In the age of video streaming, such an obsolete vision of video protection is as puzzling as the poor quality of the surveillance images of the corridors of Parisian basements.

Read alsoFaced with insecurity, more and more French people are arming themselves

The Ministry of Justice also knows how to insist on the efforts made in terms of legal aid.

But in fact, the compensation system for victims of assaults and attacks is on the verge of asphyxiation.

Despite the efforts of the judges, the smallest case takes years to be processed and then judged, contributing to keeping the victims in an omnipresent past.

As for possible compensation, there too, patience is the leitmotif of the victims.

Should I take my case for a generality?

No doubt: I had to wait three years for the possibility of benefiting from a simple judicial expertise.

Indeed, if some doctors are willing to call themselves experts with the court on their plate, in fact, the truth is quite different: as I

confided those who have twice declined my own expertise, either they are overwhelmed with late files, or they no longer want to take them as the Ministry of Justice pays little and late for legal expertise.

A slowness that the litigant would be tempted to impute to the judges, when they are also the victims.

Basically, the most useful in the service of victims is sometimes the most discreet.

Such as the small cell of magistrates and clerks managing in Paris the compensation files for victims of bodily injury.

Judikael Hirel

Basically, the most useful in the service of victims is sometimes the most discreet.

Such as the small cell of magistrates and clerks managing in Paris the compensation files for victims of bodily injury.

Admittedly, very often, no amount can be equal to the damage suffered and the suffering endured.

But these civil hearings at least allow the victims to confide, to put an end to their journey as litigants.

And above all to give a human face to a justice that the lack of means too often disfigures.

Alas, faced with the current explosion in the number of files and the amounts to be compensated, beyond the announcement effects, how long will the specialized court devoted to victims of terrorism (JIVAT) and the compensation commission for victims of '

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-02-22

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