Eighteen children victims of sexual violence every hour in France: what consequences for their future life?

It’s a long-term job. This Wednesday, September 21, the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against Children (Ciivise), created in January 2001 by the government following the case of the famous political scientist Olivier Duhamel, accused of sexual abuse of his son-in-law, made his first report on the traumatic and dramatic consequences of sexual violence suffered during childhood, relates the Huffington Post.

In this report, nothing less than 16,414 testimonies of sexual violence against children, 81% of which are acts of incest. The commission estimates that 160,000 children are affected by sexual violence each year in France, or 438 per day, or 18 every hour. And 90% of those victims are girls.

The psychotraumatic consequences of this violence committed “by one or more relatives“, repeated or accompanied by threats of other violence, remain in almost 100% of child victims, even decades later. They affect their physical and mental health, but also in their emotional, sexual and professional life.

These consequences are multiple, according to the Ciivise report.

• Risky behaviors: nearly one in two women describe eating disorders and nearly 40% of men have addictions. 70% of people mention avoidance behaviors (when faced with situations or people), or suicide attempts.
• Psychologically and physically: seven out of ten people report depression and nightmares. 30% of people speak of a “physical impact”, well after the fact: “It’s as if the cells remember it physically. As if you felt everything in your body, all the time”, one of them testifies.
• “Family” suffering: according to the report, “nshadowy are the victims who reveal the violence to their families and who find themselves excluded”. Also accused of “breaking up the family”, their sentence is double.

School, work: precariousness or refuge

The report of the Incest Commission also establishes that the impact of this violence suffered in childhood can also lead the victims to interrupt their schooling, and later their professional career, “because the symptoms of the psychotrauma forced them to work in precarious jobs”.

Conversely, for other victims, school and work can be considered as refuges from the memory of these traumas, but, reports a testimony, “my professional and public life are pretty showcases that mask the field of ruins”.

This difference in feelings is also reflected in sexuality: 30% of victims suffer from an absence of libido going as far as a total absence of sexuality, but for the rest, nearly one in two men and one in three women multiply partners in their sex life.

Same dichotomy in relation to a possible parenthood: either the pure and simple renunciation of conceiving a child and a family life, or the fear “to reproduce the attacks on their own children”.

Finally, the report includes 25 recommendations to help child victims of incest and/or support their “post-traumatic” journey, including systematic identification and reporting in the event of suspicion, “reparation” (in particular through care and prevention), guaranteeing victims specialized in psychotrauma, suspend the parental authority of a parent prosecuted for incest, “ddeprive the judicial police services specializing in cyber-pedocrime of the necessary human and material resources”, or even “organize a major national campaign on sexual violence against children”.