Aurélien Taquet, during his visit to Marchant Hospital in Toulouse, to discuss the awareness campaign for the STOP system (telephone counseling and prevention service).

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J. Rimbert / 20 Minutes

  • For a year, five French regions, including Midi-Pyrénées, experimented with the call number of the STOP device.

  • This service is aimed at people sexually attracted to children and aims to listen to their words, to better prevent pedophilia.

  • The Secretary of State also announced a communication campaign throughout France around this taboo subject.

"The idea of ​​this communication campaign is not to offend the general public and victims of pedophilia but to transcribe a message with a visual and to make things evolve", confides Cécile Miele, psychologist at the Resource Centers for Intervenors with the perpetrators of sexual violence (CRIAVS) in Clermont-Ferrand.

This professional was present on Friday during the visit to the Marchant hospital in Toulouse of the Secretary of State for Children and Families, Adrien Taquet, to explain his experience in monitoring pedophiles.

On the occasion of this meeting, the awareness campaign for the STOP system (telephone counseling and prevention service) *, which enables people sexually attracted to children, was extended to 54 departments.

In parallel, a national poster campaign was also launched to better guide these people, who often do not dare to talk about it.

Over a thousand calls in a year

For a year, five French regions, including Midi-Pyrénées, experimented with the call number of the STOP device.

An essential test to raise a taboo subject and which makes it possible to carry out prevention and avoid victims.

"For people who have not yet taken action and who feel an attraction for children, this makes it possible to seek help and support," explains Anne-Hélène Moncany, psychiatrist in Toulouse and president. of the Federation of CRIAVS, at the origin of the initiative.

It was a struggle to have this system accepted in France because we are far behind in relation to these questions ”.

It is often once convicted that psychologists deal with pedophiles.

With this call number, the idea is to take care of these people before they take action.

From November 2019 to November 2020, nearly 1,070 calls, from 340 people, were recorded on the STOP system.

The majority were men, aged 19 to 75.

At the other end of the phone, they spoke with a psychiatrist, a nurse or a sex therapist, trained in this issue.

After an assessment, nearly three quarters of callers were referred to specialized centers.

"Difficult not to have speaking space"

Highlight of the Secretary of State's visit: the speech of a 35-year-old man, who called the device.

For more than twenty years, he has felt an attraction for young children but claims to be unable to harm a child.

Himself a victim of sexual violence in his childhood, he knows the damage such an act has on a child.

"It's an internal, chronic fight and the most difficult was not to have a space for speaking, listening because we know the image that a pedophile sends back to society," he reports with emotion.

I made the choice to fight alone rather than crossing the red line.

Last year, I took the plunge by calling the number because I felt for the first time that I could be a danger to a child.

My goal is to move forward and for it to take up less space in my life ”.

A communication campaign on the risk of pedophilia will be launched throughout France.

- J. Rimbert

A testimony listened to attentively by Adrien Taquet, who counts “on the communication campaign on this device to make it visible.

The question of sexual violence is a topical subject, which is revealed there with a mass phenomenon, plunging deeply into the roots of our society.

We must ensure that we take this step and activate all possible levers against this scourge ”.

* 0 806 23 10 63

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