On January 23, 2021, Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of an independent Commission on incest and sexual violence against children (Ciivise). Its mission: to collect the words of victims and, based on these testimonies, to formulate public policy recommendations. Almost three years later, eighty-two recommendations make up its final report, officially submitted on Friday, November 17, to Charlotte Caubel, the Secretary of State for Children.
The colossal work, carried out by the Ciivise under the co-chairmanship of magistrate Edouard Durand and social worker Nathalie Mathieu, takes up 600 pages. The commission collected nearly 30,000 testimonies during hearings, by telephone, in writing, through its online questionnaire or during public meetings organized each month in a city in France.
It is from these stories, but also from work in the social sciences and literary works dealing with this subject, that the commission developed its reflection. The report analyzes the mechanisms of sexual violence against children, and in particular those of incest, as well as their consequences, followed by a presentation of measures to improve protection.
The “doctrine” of the Civil Society, resolutely positioned alongside the victims, can be read in the title of the report, “Sexual violence against children: “We believe you””. “Incest is a crime invisible to the legislator and therefore to society (…). Faced with this emergency, to remedy these confusions, lift the veil on the denial and finally put words to this unnamed person, the Ciivise wanted to rethink incest and define its specificities in order to account for all the forms that take on this violence, and its sprawling consequences”we can read.
A massive phenomenon, rooted in denial
What are we talking about ? To show the extent of the phenomenon, some recent figures, taken in particular from a survey carried out in 2020 by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research for the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase), are cited in the report. One in ten people were victims of sexual violence as children. This concerns 5.4 million adult women and men. And the family is the first space where this violence takes place (81% takes place within the family, 22% within the close environment, 11% within an institution, 8% within the space public, according to the victims, some of whom declare several attackers). Every year, 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence, particularly incest, the Ciivise has been insisting for months.
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