Since Sunday, February 21, 2021, people who are victims of sexual violence have taken the hashtag # MeTooAmnesia on Twitter. At the origin of this initiative, the MoiAussiAmnesie association.
On social networks, many Internet users use the hashtag # MeTooAmnesia. After #MeToo, #MeTooInceste or even #MeTooGay, Twitter lifts the veil on the traumatic amnesia that some victims of sexual violence can suffer. While traumatic amnesia does not affect all victims, it is very real in some. Most often, it appears when the violence was suffered during childhood. This is why, according to the MoiAussiAmnesia association, the question of traumatic amnesia must be asked by the public authorities. As a reminder, traumatic amnesia corresponds to a period during which a victim of sexual violence is unaware of what she has suffered. The poignant posts that can be seen through the hashtag # MeTooAmnesia bear witness to this.
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The importance of recognizing traumatic amnesia for victims
If victims of sexual violence place such importance on the recognition of traumatic amnesia before the law, it is to facilitate the procedures for lodging complaints. Indeed, often, the victims come out of this amnesia when their complaints cannot be followed because of the prescription. The HuffingtonPost recalls that on October 17, 2018, the highest court of the French judicial order issued a judgment stipulating that "Traumatic amnesia (…) cannot be considered as constituting an insurmountable obstacle in fact comparable to force majeure which may have suspended the limitation period." While it is possible, in cases of force majeure, to suspend the prescription for a given time, traumatic amnesia is unfortunately not considered as such.
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This is why Mié Kohiyama, president of the MoiAussiAmnésie association, wishes to lift the veil on the suffering that this represents for the victims and, above all, to have traumatic amnesia registered in the law, in order to allow victims to have their complaint taken into account. According to her, this is a way out to rebuilding victims of sexual violence, but also a hope for them that justice will be done.