In 2018, Thierry Beccaro published Je suis né à 17 ans..., a book in which he reveals his past as a battered child. The adaptation of his book for television will be broadcast in September on France 2. The former host of "Motus" interprets his own role, as he reveals this Sunday, May 21 in "A Sunday in the Country".
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An exercise in introspection to which each of the guests of the show hosted by Frédéric Lopez must submit, confronting his own photograph of a child. "You were very brave, now you don't have to be afraid. We both managed well," Thierry Beccaro tells himself, installed in the attic of the house he shares for a weekend with Liane Foly and Alice Pol.
"Alcohol will awaken all his demons"
His first years, he spent them in happiness, with his grandmother. His parents did not have enough to accommodate him at that time. But at the age of 4, he was picked up by his mother, a professional soldier, and his father who lived in Colombes. The latter is of Italian origin and still carries the trauma of fascist Italy from which he had to flee. "My father with all his fragile, his jealousy vis-à-vis my mother, the work she does with men, his desire to rise in society and complexes perhaps on his physique, will fall into alcohol and alcohol will awaken all his demons" then says Thierry Beccaro. Then begins for the little boy a daily life of violence and abuse. "The slightest pretext makes him want to smash me down the stairs," he recalls. He adds: "It's terrible because you don't understand why. The only thing I told myself was that I must have done something wrong. Then he told me he loved me. What could I do better than do nothing wrong? I never knew when it was going to fall."
A traumatic episode
Then comes the traumatic episode, from which the title of his book is taken. He is 17 years old, he is revising his baccalaureate. "I hear a cavalcade in the house," recalls Thierry Beccaro, who is about to tell a terrible scene. His father, armed with a rifle, holds his mother in cheek. The host claims to be "dead that night, from then on, there are no more words in my head, it's emptiness". He left this hell at the age of 17. He began working at La Maison de la radio. He found his first contract thanks, almost ironically, to his father. He was then a car dealer and it was with nerve that he proposed his son's CV while he sells a car to the host Jo Dona.
Today, Thierry Beccaro continues to be committed against abuse. "The big problem of this theme is silence, omerta," he analyzes. He denounces these phrases too often heard as "We suspected ourselves but, we preferred not to intervene". Its history dates back to the 1960s, a time when "we do not go to the shrink, we do not divorce", so many obstacles that lock victims in their violent families. To those who question him: "why didn't you say anything?", Thierry Beccaro has an implacable answer: "whatever happens, a child protects his parents".