This is undoubtedly a first in France: in Paris, a place should soon be created to pay tribute to women victims of violence, especially domestic violence. So decided the elected officials of the capital, meeting on Tuesday 1er June in city council. A project in this direction was presented by the socialist mayor of the 13e arrondissement, Jérôme Coumet, and adopted unanimously.
This is still only a wish, but a location is already being considered for placing a plaque or creating a memorial, not far from the Place de la Bergère-d’Ivry, in the 13e borough. Like the project as a whole, the proposed place is eminently symbolic. Aimée Millot, known as the “shepherdess of Ivry”, was a 19-year-old orphaned young woman who grazed her goats in Ivry, just outside Paris. She has remained in history for having been murdered by Honoré Ulbach on May 25, 1827, out of “amorous spite”. The affair, which caused a sensation, was notably mentioned by Victor Hugo and Régine Deforges, who devoted his last novel to it, published posthumously in 2014.
Today, how many Aimée Millot? “In our country, a woman dies murdered by her spouse or ex-spouse every two and a half days, Jérôme Coumet recalled Tuesday in the hemicycle of the Town hall. Yesterday we learned the 48e feminicide of the year. “ In Douai (North), a 33-year-old woman was found at home covered with bruises and marks of multiple blows, and died during the night from Sunday to Monday, “Apparently traumatic”. Her partner was taken into police custody for intentional manslaughter.
Each year in France, some 220,000 women suffer domestic violence and 93,000 are victims of rape or attempted rape, according to official figures, which do not take into account all those who remain silent. A terrible toll, which has grown heavier with the health crisis.
“A place to break the silence”
These women, victims of violence in the private setting, most often, “We don’t see them, we don’t hear them, we don’t know them”, noted Jérôme Coumet. “We talk about it in the news, but over time, there is not much left”, added her colleague Laurence Patrice, the deputy (Communist Party) of Anne Hidalgo in charge of memory.
To make this massive phenomenon visible, activists have been putting up posters in the streets for several years. In January, a collective also installed a “Memorial” provisional in a covered passage of 11e arrondissement, by pasting papers bearing the first names of 111 women murdered in 2020: Sarah, Virginie, Grâce, Mathilde, Claudette … In the same logic, the elected Parisians led by the left want a more lasting place to be dedicated to memory of these victims. It could serve as a point of gathering, of meditation, of public tribute. “A place to break the silence”, according to Jérôme Coumet’s formula.
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