After being found, doubt persists around the reason for the lie of the young jogger who lied about the cause of her disappearance.
“She is most likely the victim of serious crime.” Disappeared on November 8, the young 17-year-old Mayenne jogger was found alive twenty-four hours later. After claiming, in shock, to have been kidnapped by two men in a van, she finally confessed on Friday to having lied. During a hearing by investigators, she said she was accidentally injured. In a statement, the prosecutor of the Republic of Laval, Céline Maigné, had specified that the young girl would be the subject of a procedure for “denunciation of imaginary offense”. No additional information has yet been given, but, since this announcement, the doubt persists around the following question: why did she lie?
Victim or “mythomaniac”?
Interviewed by LCI, the doctor in psychopathology Hélène Romano wished to warn against the reversal of situation around the young girl. If the case was widely publicized and created a national stir, the jogger seems to have gone from victim to “Mythomaniac, with all the associated disorders”, assures the psychologist. The reasons behind this lie are perhaps more complicated than you might think. “She is very probably the victim of serious facts that she could not state”, she exposed, “Most likely she suffered terribly and is hiding something else.”
Although she admits this is a rare situation, “There are cases where children or adolescents will set up a scenario”, she explained. So as not to have to express a reality “Unbearable to denounce”, they would state indirect facts. The psychologist illustrates her point: a child accuses a teacher rather than his stepfather. It is important not to “Demonize” the young woman without knowing all the elements of the story and not to jump to hasty conclusions.
Article written in collaboration with 6medias