how to educate children to better protect them?

If the domestic violence have always existed, they are no longer considered as a standard nor a subject taboo, but as a societal problem to eradicate. The health crisis and the successive confinements have amplified this violence: many women have found themselves isolated and locked up 24 hours a day with their attacker, and it is almost 3,000 incidents of domestic violence which were recorded by the courts during the 1st confinement.

The reality of domestic violence is more than worrying: today, 1 in 2 women dies under the blows of his spouse, and 1 in 10 women declares himself a victim of domestic violence, whether physical, sexual, verbal and / or psychological. In 2020, these are 102 women who were killed in this way.
The big ones forgotten by this problem? Children who grow up in a family unit where there is a dynamic of domestic violence. The latest report from the ORVF (Regional Observatory for Violence against Women) averages at 143,000 the number of children who live in a home where women are victims of such violence. Among them, 42% are less than 6 years old. The impact on their development is such that we do not speak of “witnesses” but of “co-victims” of domestic violence.

What consequences for the child?

The child who witnesses domestic violence risks being strongly impacted, in his psycho-social development. The consequences are numerous, both in terms of its health that of his behviour :

• Somatic, emotional and psychological disorders: post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders …
• Behavior disorders: violence, delinquency, lack of interest in school, drug addiction …
• Learning disabilities manifested by physical and cognitive symptoms
• Loss of self-esteem

Inhabited by concerns that should not be those of their age, these children often encounter difficulties during their school path, which will have an impact on their socio-professional life.

The child co-victim is also built with imbalanced parenting models since he was confronted with insecure figures.
Anyone who has grown up and built themselves while attending this violence therefore presents a increased risk of reproducing violence or from victimization. Among women who have suffered domestic violence, 1 of 4 later finds himself in a situation of domestic violence.

Tatiana-Laurence Delarue, a former victim of domestic violence, grew up with a mother who was beaten by her companions and who had herself suffered intra-family violence:

My mother never knew her father, and her mother only loved her child boys, not her daughters. She pampered the boys and raped the girls, and let the brothers go and rape them. In fact, my mother had a heavy story and that’s why she in turn entered this violence. She wanted to run away from her mother’s violence, so she left home very early and found the first comer, my father, who was unfortunately violent. She ran away from my dad, she found another mate, and he was violent. And she passed away at 29.

For her, the family background which she inherited, and the way in which those around her had trivialized these acts contributed to predispose her to this same type of violence:

I was predestined for this. I was prepared there as to a “taste” when we diversified food. I had a box in my head that was ready for this. We have educational parts in the brain that train us in certain things. All this family context had predisposed me to experience this. I was educated by telling me that it existed, that it was normal. When you take a step back, you don’t have to look very far to understand why I myself then experienced domestic violence, since I could not alert myself to the first signs of micro-violence.

Education and prevention, keystones in the fight against domestic violence

In order not to create the conditions for reproducing this violence, or internalizing violence as a norm, it seems necessary to instill in children, from an early age, the keys to build themselves and learn what is normal or not. within the family unit.

• Parental education:

The family obviously has an essential role to play in transmission of models and values. Establishing a dialogue with your children, addressing issues of consent, gender equality, mutual respect and limits – verbal and physical – not to be crossed are among the educational missions for which the parents are responsible. This dialogue must imperatively be maintained even – and above all – in the event of conflicting situation between parents. For Tatiana-Laurence Delarue, the dialogue must indeed be maintained:

You have to dare to talk to a child. If the child lives, sees, hears something, it is better to explain it to him. Even for verbal abuse, if the mother has the courage, she must explain to her child: ‘Dad said that bad word, it’s not good, a dad shouldn’t say that to a mom’.

Former victim of domestic violence is aware of the impact it had on her these unspoken :

I would have liked to have been told about domestic violence when I was a child. At home, it was taboo. They spoke about it openly among themselves, adults, but did not speak to me about it. I knew what my mother was going through, but I wished someone told me about it, my aunts and my grandmother told me ‘your mom is going through this, how are you going?’. I wasn’t even asked if I witnessed it. Nobody told me: ‘what your mom is going through is not normal’. It was a taboo, like a member of a family who is alcoholic. My mother had become a taboo in this family, she had become a pipe dream.

2 books to tackle domestic violence with children

“Every evening, at mealtime, little Jeanne is worried. She waits quietly. And what she fears always ends up happening: the argument, the anger, the cries. Jeanne is afraid. She runs away. sometimes, at Grandma’s or in the plain, on her blue bicycle. But tonight, it’s raining and it’s dark …. So she closes her eyes, she presses her hands very hard on her ears and she escapes, far away. , very far from here, where his life is good, where his life will be good … “Les Artichauts” tackles a difficult subject, rarely mentioned in literature intended for the youngest: domestic violence and its consequences for children. It is indeed through the eyes of a little girl, her words and her emotions, that this story is told to us: a story at the height of a child, of a beautiful authenticity, where the correctness of the words is combines with the force of images. “
The Artichokes – Momo Géraud – Editions 2 Vives Voix –

“Lucas holds his breath every time he meets his daddy’s glare. Here one evening, barely installed in his room, Lucas hears the terrified cry of his mum. He knows that his daddy has gone mad again. . “
Daddy is mean to mom – Fatima Hadjab – The Sand Child Edition

However, Tatiana-Laurence remains skeptical about the possibility that such a dialogue will be established in all homes. For her, although the word has become free on the subject of domestic violence, not all adults are armed to address these issues, or deconstructed on the subject, and it is necessary to include these issues in the programs to train the adults of tomorrow.

Prevention in schools remains the best option so that children co-victims of domestic violence can understand that they are evolving in abnormal and criminally reprehensible situations. The school and the educational team then appear as a third party who delivers another discourse, which offers another mode of understanding in the face of the reality endured, and which therefore presents itself as a real adjuvant for the child.

While certain preventive measures have already been taken thanks to the Istanbul Convention on Awareness (in particular Articles 13 and 14), nothing has yet been included by the Ministry of National Education in school curricula. Tatiana-Laurence Delarue believes that “if the government and educational authorities tackle this problem head on, it will save lives. We will create new adults around essential values: no longer gendered education, no longer differentiating between men and women, promoting gender equality”. She continues:

It is also necessary to explain to them that there is physical, psychological, sexual violence which can settle in the daily life and which is not normal, and that if this happens, it is necessary to go to see an adult, a nurse, a doctor. teacher because there are laws: there is the possibility of protecting the family member who is being abused. You have to talk to them about the devices that exist (call 3919 or 119, go and ask for help in a pharmacy…), tell them that the gendarmes are trained in that, that the police will believe it and help them, etc. . If we educate them about all this, we are in the right direction.

• Police training

For the one who has now gone beyond the status of victim, school education must be the essential lever of prevention against gender-based and sexual violence. If the National Education has a primordial role to play, it is also essential, according to it, that another institution take its responsibilities and reform its practices: the police. On this subject, she recalls that Marlène Schiappa and Gérald Darmanin asked to train the gendarmes on intra-family violence, whether in terms of receiving victims or mastering the texts of laws: “the Ministry of the Interior has gone to zero tolerance, and for the perpetrators of violence, and for law enforcement professionals who do not do their job well”.

Today in charge of interministerial mission by Gabriel Attal and founder of the Rose-Jaune association, Tatiana-Laurence Delarue also salutes the importance of community work in this awareness-raising mission. His status allows him today, as a former victim and spokesperson for abused people, to deliver the most authentic message with political leaders:

The associative field also remains an important lever. There are associations, like mine, who work with the highest authorities where we will simply report what people tell us. Politicians have this power to pass laws but are not close to people, while associations, or former victims like me, can act as intermediaries. I have this access to the ministry and I have this access to citizens, so I can bridge the gap.

Awareness of domestic violence is there, but there is still a long way to go. Note all the same that the budget allocated to equality between women and men increases a little more each year: 50 million euros additional were announced this summer by Elisabeth Moreno for 2022, or 9 million more than in 2021. An increase of 25% which, we hope, will help to better fight against domestic violence and better support victims and co-victims.