She can no longer look any man straight in the eye. Her ex-husband’s gaze became very dark when he was violent. He was sentenced in 2022 to four months in prison for malicious telephone calls and damage to property belonging to others. It was Julie’s first love (all first names have been changed), they stayed together for twenty years. His eyes are faded blue, framed by round glasses. She widens them when she sits down in the talking circle for the first time. “Can we space the seats better? “, asks the forty-year-old in panic.
The meeting took place in a room freshly painted white, at the back of an old manor house in the south of the Nantes metropolitan area, surrounded by housing estates and a commercial area. It is the headquarters of the Departmental Association for Educational and Social Support of Loire-Atlantique (Adaes 44), which co-organizes these meetings with another association, France Victims 44 Nantes. Alongside Julie, a secretary in the private sector, there is Jeanne, 70 years old, a retired civil servant, who carefully places her overcoat on the file, before sitting down, polite smile on her lips, and Marine, a very thirty-year-old dressed in black. She shoves her fists into the pockets of her open down jacket. They stand out like mittens from the lining, like a boxer ready for combat.
These three women are survivors of domestic violence. In a few minutes, three strangers will take their place opposite them. Easels placed on the armchairs indicate their first names: Robert, Mathieu and Romain. All three committed violence against their partner. This group of six people agreed to meet every Friday evening, for three hours, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., five weeks in a row, from November to December 2023.
A complement to criminal justice
How did they get there? Why were they unable to detect and stop the violence in time? How can we now live with the wounds for some, the shame for others? Everyone hopes to learn here to never fall back into these patterns again. This strange closed session has a name: “restorative justice”.
The craze around the film I will always see your facesby Jeanne Herry, released in March 2023 and in the running for the Césars on February 23, shined the spotlight on these programs, which take various forms, including one-on-one restorative mediation between a victim and their own executioner .
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