Having a pool is a dream! Except for the parents whose child is drowning. After having lived this nightmare, Laurence fought so that it was no longer a fatality.
On July 10, 1996, Laurence Pérouème, then a young mother, experienced the unthinkable. Her little boy Benoît, aged 16 months, drowns in a swimming pool. “Because all it took was a few seconds of inattention linked to a combination of circumstances, as in the vast majority of cases, sighs Laurence, 57 today. There are very few irresponsible parents, but far too many who think: ‘It won’t happen to us, we’re careful!’Alas…”
In order to overcome this indescribable pain, the young mother got involved: she wanted to save the other children from this atrocious accident and created Sauve-qui-vaut association, a year after the drowning of his son. A tragedy that struck around thirty children a year, the equivalent of an entire kindergarten class! “When I was talking about our drama, I discovered that everyone knew a neighbor, a friend, a grandparent, who had experienced the same thing, and no security was compulsory in France“Laurence explains.
From now on, any owner of an unsecured swimming pool incurs a fine of €45,000 and criminal prosecution.
She then wrote to deputies and senators, including Jean-Pierre Raffarin. He is one of those who know “someone who…” and allows him to launch an awareness campaign. But posters are not enough. “We understood that we needed a law, but the swimming pool specialists proved to be very recalcitrant and worried: they accused us of breaking the dream by demanding gate barriers or shelters. My goal was on the contrary to preserve this dream, for others. However, we had to make concessions.”
Laurence wasn’t enthusiastic about security blankets – which no one puts back on during the day – or worse, the alarm, which people spend their time cutting so they can bathe whenever they want. Fortunately, in 2002, Jean-Pierre Raffarin is appointed Prime Minister, and passes a law the following year. Since then, any owner of an unsecured swimming pool incurs a fine of €45,000 and criminal prosecution. Result: accidents have decreased by 50%, while the number of swimming pools has doubled in ten years, reaching almost 3 million in France. But pools and inflatable pools are unfortunately not affected by these measures.
“Some rescued children remain affected by irreversible neurological damage”
“I still see too many accidents happening because we don’t know thata child drowns in 20 cm of water in less than three minutes. And, next to the deaths, we do not speak of the rescued children who remain suffering from irreversible neurological sequelae due to cerebral asphyxia.” It is because a child is an explorer, ignorant of danger, fast and uncontrollable, that Laurence has extended her action to raise awareness of domestic accidents.
Today, she writes children’s albums, like Hugo is a superhero (Éd. du Ricochet), books on bereavement and reconstruction, and leads workshops in kindergarten (laurenceperoueme.com and Sauvequiveut.asso.fr). Mother of two boys aged 27 and 23 and a girl aged 21, she tried to raise them without overprotecting them. Because she repeats it tirelessly: “Security is not the phobia. Just a bulwark against avoidable misfortune.”
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