In recent years, the silence on the ravages caused by incest and, more broadly, sexual violence against children, has begun to break. With its latest opinion, made public on Monday June 12, the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against Children (Ciivise), which has largely contributed to bringing the subject to light, nevertheless intends to expose the “cost of denial”Again ” massive “. The method is inspired by similar calculations made by feminist activists in order to highlight the cost of domestic violence or prostitution.
In this case, the denial surrounding sexual violence against children costs 9.7 billion euros per year to society as a whole, estimates the commission, set up in March 2021 by decision of Emmanuel Macron, with the objective of receiving victims and inspiring protective public policies.
To arrive at this figure of nearly 10 billion euros per year, the firm Psytel, to which the Ciivise had recourse, relied on various data (official statistics, victimization and general population surveys, French and international studies) , extracting the consequences “for which the costs can be subject to a monetary valuation”.
Several items, such as public expenditure devoted to police and gendarmerie costs, criminal justice, social assistance for children or the treatment of mental disorders, for example, weighted with regard to the number of known victims (160,000 per year), are added together to arrive at the final result.
A “minimum” assessment
In the top three expenditures grouped together in this way is the amplification of risky behavior induced by exposure to incest and sexual violence during childhood (2,609 million euros per year, i.e. 27% of the figures ), the cost of treating mental disorders (2,101 million euros, 21.7%) and the reception and support of victims (1,676 million euros, 17.3%). The study distinguishes two categories: the immediate cost of violence against children (30.8% of the total) and the long-term cost, which is the highest (69.2%).
“It is a conservative figure, which only takes into account expenditure items for which we have precise data”explains Lucile Peytavin, expert at Psytel, which produces an assessment “minimal”certain consequences could not be accounted for due to a lack of sufficient figures. “For example, we estimated at less than 10 million euros the budget devoted to prevention, but we could not include it in the absence of precise data”she says, noting in passing that “the consequences cost a thousand times more than what we spend to prevent them”.
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