Seized by “hundreds” of women expressing their inability to protect their child from incest, failing to be believed and heard, the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against Children (Ciivise) decided to devote his first opinion, Wednesday, October 27, to the fight of these “mothers in struggle”. The independent body, which aims to suggest avenues for legislative changes to better protect children from sexual violence, draws up in this ten-page document a worrying inventory in several respects.
First and foremost, by evaluating the number of cases of paternal incest, which it achieves by combining data extracted from INED’s “Virage” and “Context of sexuality in France” surveys, and “Living environment and security” of the statistical service of the Ministry of the Interior. According to his calculation, 22,000 children are victims of sexual violence committed by their father each year. However, in 2020, only 1,697 people were prosecuted for rape or sexual assault of an incestuous nature, notes the Ciivise, and 760 sentenced for these reasons in 2018, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Justice available.
Very harsh stories
Worrisome, the opinion is also by highlighting the resistance at work in society in the protection of the children concerned and their “protective parents”, in other words, the mothers. This is evidenced by the very harsh stories echoed by the Ciivise. As an example, it tells the story of a mother and her daughter, nicknamed Christine and Katy respectively. After a divorce against a background of domestic violence, Katy’s father obtains visitation and accommodation rights for half of the school holidays.
A few years later, the little one, aged 4 and a half, revealed to adults around her the sexual violence committed by her father. She asks: “Is it normal or not that my daddy turns my bitch around his finger and makes me take off my panties to sleep?” “ Insufficient, however, to succeed in the rape complaint filed by his mother, which is dismissed. Despite repeated accusations a year later to her mistress, the children’s judge decided to separate Katy from her mother on the grounds of a “Massive parental conflict”. She is entrusted to a child welfare home, whose team accuses Christine of having “Raised her daughter against her father”.
Today, the latter is only allowed to be in contact with her daughter for forty-five minutes every two weeks, in a publicized visit (in a neutral place, in the presence of a social worker). The father has three hours of partially publicized visit every two weeks.
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