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Meals are taken in a small dining hall.
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E.Provenzano / 20 Minutes
Adrien Taquet, Secretary of State for Child Protection, visited on Thursday the only care center for incest victims that exists in France, in Agen.
Former residents of this reception center have testified to him and sent him requests to improve the care of victims.
The center has developed a method of supervision which aims at a progressive liberation of speech and support towards social reintegration.
"Do not put my name, it's my father's," says Jessica, 18, interviewed by
20 Minutes
.
She arrived in 2014 at the Jean-Bru reception center in Agen, which since 1996 has been taking care of young girls who are victims of incest placed by children's judges.
With other former residents of this structure approved by the Department, she met this Thursday Adrien Taquet, Secretary of State in charge of child protection, who came to visit the structure.
He announced on this occasion that the former Minister of Justice Elisabeth Guigou would chair the independent commission on incest, which has just been created.
The center is housed in a beautiful stone building, a family property that Doctor Nicolas Bru donated to the association, which was keen to make it a warm place.
She has developed a reception model that is unique in France and allows 25 young girls aged 10 to 21, supervised by educators trained in incest, to rebuild themselves in a suitable environment.
Six young girls are present this Thursday and instinctively regroup while awaiting the arrival of the Secretary of State.
Some left the establishment only a few months ago, others several years, and they all return with pleasure.
They have met some friends there and some even speak of "second family".
They manage to overcome their emotions in order to express themselves on what they have gone through, a good proof of the groundwork that we have helped them to carry out.
"A springboard for rebuilding"
"I did not know that what I was undergoing was wrong and I did not know the reasons for my placement at nine years old, other than through discussions with other young girls of the structure, says Angélique Mouly, former boarder and president of the governing board.
Hence the interest in having a specialized structure on domestic violence ”.
She was placed for family neglect and she recounted the sexual violence she suffered after her placement.
"We think that what we experience at home, it happens in other homes and as it affects the body and intimacy, we do not talk about it with others," she adds.
Then come the feelings of shame and guilt when they realize that what has happened to them is not normal.
“I arrived in 2013 after my revelations and I stayed [at the reception center] until I was 21, it served as a springboard for me, book Anaïs, 22 years old.
There is a building of confidence and I felt safe.
There are always things that are difficult but I did most of the work here.
Thanks to mediated visits with her mother during her stay, she kept a link with her maternal family but none on the paternal side.
A break with the paternal branch occurs for many of the residents.
"It was a springboard to rebuild me," said Laetitia, 26, who was admitted to the reception center twenty years ago, with her sister Christine, her two-year-old elder who remembers the difficulty of leave their region, Alsace, and all the people they knew to come here.
“What helped me as a teenager and still today is writing,” points out Christine.
It's a much more recent experience for Jessica, a young adult who left “Jean-Bru” this summer.
"It was complicated because to be in this structure, it reminded me all the time that I was a victim of incest," she says, her throat a little tight.
On the other hand, the other girls understand better what I went through.
»Attacked by her father and brother, she now looks to the future even though she has been waiting for more than five years for them to be brought to justice.
"Now I can move forward, if they are judged so much the better but I will not be attached to that", relativizes the young girl who takes tests in January to enter the Army.
Aim for social reintegration
"They stay on average two to three years here, they go to school and have a normal life with educational and psychological support", explains Nathalie Mathieu, general manager of the reception center.
“We get them to gradually be free to speak, overcoming feelings of shame and guilt,” says Laetitia Garimbay, educator and service coordinator for the exterior apartments.
Gradually, a bond of trust is created and we can work with them on their integration into society.
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A little apart from the others, a small independent apartment, but located within the confines of the house, offers a transition to young girls, before they are installed in apartments outside the structure.
Once there, they continue to have regular contact with the educators who call them and come to see them.
After the brutality they have known, the rule here is to give them time and get them to rebuild themselves smoothly.
“The fact of being here has an effect of recognition, but one of the major problems [in the case of incest] is the question of denial, of appointment, underlines Patrick Ayoun, child psychiatrist, regulatory supervisor and member of the board. host house scientist.
The most important advantage of the center is to allow them to reconnect with the human community because when one is a victim of incest one has the impression of being excluded even from the human species ”.
This specialist works with the team of social workers who supervise the young girls and who, too, need support to cope with the terrible stories of the victims.
Improve care
"For a long time, a lot of things have been produced, said, analyzed about incest and yet there is not much change, silence is also societal" launched without mince words the director of the place to the Secretary of State for Child Protection.
She notes that social workers, due to a lack of training, find themselves unable to screen victims of incest.
"To identify effectively, it is necessary to keep in mind that intra-family violence exists in a much more widespread way than one thinks, as well for the girls and the boys, still the big absent of this policy", supports it. .
The young girls taken into care in its center often arrive after "chaotic journeys", in the circuit of child protection and are sometimes presented as "unstoppable" who are given "one last chance".
Boys also victims
“Previously, we had a restrictive conception of incest, but we are discovering that a lot of incest takes place in siblings, that grandparents can be perpetrators and also that some mothers can participate,” adds Patrick Ayoun.
The structure has a project to take care of little boys who are victims of incest who have not yet had any specialized follow-up.
“The taboo is even stronger and socially there is a difficulty in perceiving the boy victim, analyzes the child psychiatrist.
It should be remembered, however, that the majority of men are perpetrators and women are victims ”.
Asked about the projects to be carried out to improve things, the young girls also believe that school should be a place where we explain "that there are things that cannot be done", as part of an education to sexuality.
"The creation of the commission must help to make incest a subject of society that we all seize, it took thirty years for domestic violence and it is very difficult to reduce feminicides but everyone is working on it, concluded Adrien Taquet.
It is the same path for sexual violence against children ”.
The fact remains that incest is an even greater taboo and that the site looks complex.
In “Jean-Bru”, we hope that the example of the reception center will contribute to better management of this “blind spot” of child protection.
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