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Jeanne's long journey to file a complaint, 20 years after rape on a sailboat

2020-10-27T19:54:21.715Z


This young thirty-something took years before being able to evoke this tragedy which occurred when she was 12 years old. After his complaint, an ex-friend of s


Jeanne seems to have traveled since childhood a path strewn with pitfalls and traps.

An interior journey filled with silences that tells the story of the imprisonment of many rape victims until the day they end up filing a complaint.

For her, this feeling of liberation dates from April 2019, twenty years after the alleged facts.

At the start, there is a first trip, by plane this one, to Panama, in the company of his father and his partner.

Jeanne was 12 years old.

“We left in August 1999 for a fortnight in the San Blas archipelago on a boat of which a friend of my father was the skipper,” recalls the young thirty-something.

The Caribbean Sea and the white sand beaches then form a postcard backdrop.

But the holidays, which looked like a maritime lock-up, turned into a nightmare.

Jean-Charles

(Editor's note: the first names have been changed)

, the captain of the sailboat, a lover of rum and cigars, initially causes discomfort.

"In the early days, he sticks behind me, wearing only a swimsuit, to show me how to wash the dishes on board," rewinds Jeanne, precise and jerky flow.

"It's paralyzing," she continues.

I feel that there is a gap between what he says which is normal and what makes which is not.

On the water, would the sailor feel above the laws of the land?

She tells of a first assault.

“We were both swimming around the boat.

My father and his partner weren't there.

He removed part of my swimsuit to bring out my breast and touch it.

I was in pain.

But it was shameful, I couldn't talk about it.

"

Several clicks in series

The single skipper, then 36, would then have won the sympathy of the young teenager, playing the role of the confidant.

Before enjoying its advantage at night, out of sight.

“It was in my cabin or in hers,” she explains.

He touched my breasts and then asked me for blowjobs, giving me specific instructions.

I remember two episodes in particular.

This without the man exerting any physical constraint on her.

“I have heard lots of questions about my possible consent and I understand that it is complicated to understand the mechanisms of control, sighs Jeanne.

But at 12, you can't feel like giving blowjobs to 36-year-olds… ”

On her return to her mother's in the Tarn, she puts a few words in her diary and the first changes appear.

Jeanne wears a gothic look and tries to muzzle her suffering.

Three years later, she details her version of the facts in a notebook.

This written record will be discovered by his mother who offers to file a complaint.

But the father is not kept informed and the daughter does not feel ready to take the plunge.

The secret remains well kept.

Jeanne follows a normal education, at least in appearance, then experiences a chaotic entry into the professional world.

His private life is tormented and the mere fact of being around a man in transport becomes a source of anguish.

Badly advised by a psychologist, the young woman then tries to bury her discomfort.

Without success.

Several clicks in series will eventually occur.

Listening to her story, a psychiatrist encouraged her in 2017 to initiate proceedings.

Two months later, she finally confides in her father, without giving him all the details.

Then, supported by her lawyer, Me Pauline Rongier, she filed a complaint in April 2019 with the public prosecutor of Paris, after a chance discussion with a colleague who had been raped.

“Having lodged a complaint has changed my family's outlook on me, Jeanne weighs.

As if it was finally becoming a serious topic.

Even I feel stronger… ”

"This silence, I take it as a form of indifference"

The investigation is entrusted to the brigade for the protection of minors.

In September 2019, the respondent was arrested when he got off the plane, from Panama, the country where he was still installed.

Without a criminal record, the man is indicted for rape and placed under judicial supervision.

He is forbidden to leave France.

"The situation is doubly regrettable, for the civil party in the first instance but also for the indicted person deprived of liberty even though he is implicated on the sole basis of a complaint for facts that he disputes and old. of twenty years ”, reacts Me Matthieu Conquy, lawyer of Jean-Charles.

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“To file a complaint twenty years after the facts is always difficult, retorts Me Pauline Rongier, Jeanne's lawyer. But at the end of an effective investigation, a judge considered that there were against the respondent sufficiently serious and consistent evidence to indict him of the facts of rape. We just regret that Jeanne has never been heard since ”. “This silence, I take it as a form of indifference, as if it eroded the existence of my complaint and the seriousness of the facts, breathes Jeanne. This link is missing to be able to move forward… ”

Source: leparis

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