Sitting facing the audience installed in the amphitheater, dark suit and thin round glasses, judge Edouard Durand smiles. This Tuesday evening in December 2021, at the University of Avignon, a woman has just finished the trying story of paternal incest denounced by her daughter, which she is unable to have recognized by the courts, in ‘questioning. “I have never seen that, a judge like you, who says “you have to believe the victims”! But where do you come from? »she says, stunned, to the co-president of the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children (Ciivise), created a few months earlier.
Over the months, the face of the former children’s judge of Bobigny, aged 48, has become that of this body, almost making us forget its co-president Nathalie Mathieu. “The fact of having chosen a judge to head this commission, when we know to what extent the judicial institution is failing on this subject, it is extremely important”, believes Arnaud Gallais. Himself a victim of incest during his childhood, which he recounts in the book I was a child (Flammarion, 224 pages, 20 euros) prefaced by Edouard Durand, he met him by joining the Ciivise team. “Personally, he is a man who reconciled me with justice”he emphasizes moved, greeting “his great human qualities”.
His listening, of great intensity, certainly has a lot to do with the fascination that this man with a long, slightly stooped silhouette exerts on some. But also the choice of his words, always weighed, and marked by silences.
At each public meeting – the commission has organized twenty-six throughout France – people line up to speak to him, thank him, encourage him to continue his commitment to the fight against violence. “We believe you”, is probably the sentence he has said the most in the last three years. This is also the title of the final Ciivise report, submitted on Friday November 17 to Charlotte Caubel, the Secretary of State for Children.
The trust of victims “compels me”
Those who appreciate him praise his deep commitment against violence and in favor of public policies “more protective”. Ernestine Ronai, who has known him for a long time, says to herself “marked by his great intelligence”. This pioneer in the fight against feminicides, also a member of Ciivise, co-wrote several works with him, worked alongside him within the High Council for Equality, delivered training in tandem on domestic violence… “The imperative need for something to move, for the suffering to stop, for children to be better protected… all of this inhabits him, and it is this fierce desire, accompanied by great expertise, which makes his speech very incarnate »she observes.
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