They are now 51 years old. Catherine and Elisabeth G. are twins and the last of six siblings. They grew up in a village in the Lille metropolitan area, in a family described as ” model ” by relatives. They were victims of a brother eight years older than them. He began to rape them when they were 6 years old, in 1977. Their ordeal lasted seven years, until the brother left the family home. Catherine did not know what Elisabeth was going through, and vice versa.
“Their brother would silence them, threatening to attack the other twin if either of them spoke,” explains M.e Carine Delaby-Faure, their lawyer. They were silent, and grew up ignoring that they were both victims of rape and violence. Acts terribly described in the decision that the Compensation Commission for Crime Victims (CIVI) of Lille made, Wednesday, January 11. Present in every court of law, the CIVI can be seized by victims of offenses whose damage cannot be compensated by the perpetrator or other bodies.
It was not until Catherine was 24 years old and hospitalized in a state of very serious mental suffering that she finally began to speak. She then tells her ordeal to the medical team and the secret, carried for all these years by the two sisters, explodes. A family council is held a few weeks later. Their mother warns: she will not survive her son’s incarceration. Moral blackmail takes place and traps the twins. Family omerta prevails. We are in 1995.
“A foreclosure statement”
In 2020, Catherine and Elisabeth have made progress in their approach. They are addressed to M.e Delaby-Faure, known for regularly intervening in cases of rape or violence against women. The Lille lawyer contacted the brother who, in a terse four-line letter, in January 2021, admitted having raped his younger sisters but declared that he did not have the means to compensate them. On June 28, 2021, Catherine and Elisabeth file a complaint. From now on, the parents and a sister abound in their direction and their brother recognized in front of the gendarmes these years of incest inflicted on his sisters. But these crimes are prescribed.
In the letter of classification without follow-up for this reason, in November 2021, the prosecution specifies that “the facts revealed or denounced do indeed constitute an offence”. It is then theoretically too late to grasp the CIVI : it must be in the three years which follow the facts or in that which follows a court decision. However, the CIVI may exceptionally accept a request submitted out of time for a legitimate reason: if the victim has not been able to assert his rights in time, or if he has suffered an aggravation of his damage.
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