Tribune. Protecting children from sexual crimes deserves our full attention and mobilization. And the cases which have arisen in recent weeks show that it is largely deficient. A loud cry is heard to denounce incest, child sexual violence, not to mention family mistreatment and that of institutions to which children in danger and child victims are entrusted. And above all the denial of this reality.
But this voice is carried by victims who denounce these abuses years after the facts, who at the time did not find an attentive ear, a clairvoyant adult, capable of making a report to put an end to the violence of all. natures.
Disability of the whole society
Deficiency in school, social services, maternal and child protection (PMI), social assistance for children (ASE), police medicine, justice … Of all of society in fact who didn’t want to hear when she knew. She knew because the denunciation of incest by Eva Thomas brought against her father to the “Files of the screen”, in 1986, upset France. She also knew, because there were other testimonies at the time: Viviane, Claudine, Anne, etc.
She knew so much that in July 1989 she even passed a new law relating to the prevention of ill-treatment of minors and the protection of children. This law, which entrusts this mission to the departments, creates the 119, Allô childhood maltreated. It is also through this law that the statute of limitations for ascendant rape began to change, thanks to the action of the Feminist Collective Against Rape.
And then … time passed and the leaden cover closed. To protect the family, the patriarchal “basic unit of society”. So as not to call into question the whole social structure where we will realize that these sexual crimes against children take place in all social circles, without any exception …
We must protect child victims. The first thing to do is to know how to hear them, recognize the signs they emit, know how to intervene. We must abandon this monstrous mentality of closing our eyes, of taking refuge behind the “private”, of remaining passive, of letting it flow.
Provide the necessary resources
We must not forget that the majority of child victims are girls! And this journey of life broken from childhood will be doubled for them by what we call the continuum of violence suffered by women. Indeed, the institutions are not only faulty (police, justice in particular), they are most often sexist. Girls and adolescents, once they have become women, pay a heavy price for this accumulation of sexual, physical and psychological violence.
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