In an interview for the Mediapart site, Julie looks back on the rapes she says she suffered as a minor from around twenty firefighters, and questionable court decisions.
"They turned me into a sex object. (…) I was no longer a human being. Besides, in my eyes, I no longer had any value as a human being ", explains Julie in a video for the Mediapart site, broadcast on February 8, 2021. The young girl accuses 22 firefighters of having raped her when she was a teenager, between 2009 and 2010. Three firefighters are currently being prosecuted for sexual assault and not rape. A scandal for many associations, which rise up against patriarchal justice. "Rapists everywhere, justice nowhere", "The victim is Julie", "Julie, we believe you!", proclaimed activists Place Saint-Michel, in Paris, Sunday February 7, 2021. A rally where the young girl was present for the first time, while the Court of Cassation must examine the file Wednesday February 10, 2021.
"At 13, we're a child"
Julie recalls that these firefighters who should have protected her took advantage of her. Under heavy drug treatment, his condition required numerous interventions by firefighters concerning attacks of tetany. With one of them, she will have had a relationship for almost a year, but Julie has denounced non-consensual intercourse. "At 13, you are a child, you cannot consent to sexual acts with an adult", declares the young girl to Célia Mebroukine, journalist of Mediapart. "I was forced, I was threatened with fists, I was raped. I had no more reactions and the only small reactions I had were blamed on me as not strong enough. And so they didn't. could not understand that I was not consenting. Since I did not scream, I was for consenting justice ", she adds.
Julie explains that during these years of rape, she scarified herself and was in a "horrific state". Ten years ago, a complaint was filed, but only three firefighters were indicted for rape of a minor. In 2018, the prosecution even dropped the charges, estimating the "lack of consent" of the teenager "insufficiently characterized". Julie's family then appealed, but the request was rejected in November 2020 by the Versailles Court of Appeal. The Julie case has become over the years, as Mediapart reminds us, a "true symbol by feminist associations", which will not stop the fight. No more than Corinne Leriche, mother of Julie, at the forefront of the fight.