Every Friday,
20 Minutes
invites a personality to comment on a social phenomenon, in his meeting “20 Minutes with…”.
On the occasion of the reappearance in an expanded version of her work
Le Sang des mots
, "20 Minutes" gives the floor to Eva Thomas, who was the first woman to testify to incest with her face uncovered on television, in 1986 .
She reviews the progress of the April 2021 law and the #MeTooInceste revolution.
She was the one who showed the way.
In 1986, Eva Thomas was invited on the set of
Files of the screen
for the release of her book
Le viol du silence,
in which she
recounted the incest she suffered at the age of 15.
She is the first to testify in France on the subject with her face uncovered.
Founder of the SOS Inceste association, she fought for twenty years to pass a bill that truly protects minors from sexual violence.
Last year, during the release of
La Familia grande
, a book in which Camille Kouchner accuses her stepfather of incest on his twin brother, the name of Eva Thomas was on everyone's lips.
This Wednesday reappears in an expanded version another work by Eva Thomas,
Le Sang des mots,
published
for the first time in 1992. The opportunity for
20 Minutes
to question him on the #MeTooInceste revolution and on the progress of the law of April 2021 aimed at protecting minors from crimes and sexual offenses and from incest.
Are you aware of being the pioneer of free speech regarding incest?
Yes, because when I wrote
The Rape of Silence
, the victims did not testify.
I did it to come out of shame and to reach out to other victims.
I could never have imagined there would have been so many.
My approach was useful, because just after the show, women crossed France to come and meet me in my city, in Grenoble.
My association, SOS incest, which I had created a year earlier, was hit by a flood of appeals and letters.
Volunteers came to help me answer all of them.
How do you explain that between your revelation in 1986 on television and the wave of #MeTooIncest, thirty-five years have passed?
The company was not ready.
It took all this time for her to be no longer in denial, as she didn't want to face the unthinkable.
Associations for the defense of incest victims have worked hard to develop, among caregivers and psychotherapists, their way of listening with empathy to those who have suffered this trauma.
Since 1990, around ten laws have also made it possible to better defend victims.
Will the words of raped children now be taken more seriously?
Yes, because the multitude of testimonies of incest victims in recent years has fractured the denial of society.
And it is far from over, because the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against Children (Ciivise), which launched a call for testimonies in September, is already inundated with appeals.
Victims say to listeners: “I've been waiting for this all my life”.
In addition, thanks to the lessons learned since the Outreau affair, caregivers and police officers are better informed on the techniques of collecting speech.
You say that it is often when her first child reaches the age that the victim was at the time of the sexual violence that her memory is awakened.
Is this why speech is often released in adulthood?
If the aggression occurs when the child is very young, he is flabbergasted, unable to rebel.
Faced with the trauma, the brain undergoes a sort of short-circuit and the child then experiences traumatic amnesia.
The memory of the events can only return much later, around forty, when the adult is able to approach this burnt area on his own and face reality.
What are the survival strategies for the victims?
The artistic work and the writing fixed me.
But for many victims, support groups played a very important role.
The healing process is very slow, but at the end of the road there is life.
I'm going to be 80 years old and now what I went through has become a scar.
My past no longer devours my present.
We are not a victim for life.
You explain that the hardest thing for a child raped by his father is to continue to see him.
How do we do it?
In my book, I write that “the incestuous father tears your tongue out, hypnotizes you, paralyzes your brain and takes control of it”.
For several years after the rape, I couldn't see my parents.
It became possible again after I spoke up and my father sent me a letter of confession, because we were no longer in hypocrisy and we had faced the truth.
But in many families, the victim is rejected as soon as she speaks, accused of wanting to blow up the tribe.
Many incest victims decide to change their first name, just like you did.
Is this a way to be reborn after the drama?
To take a new first name is to start from scratch, to enter into a new identity.
To ask for this change in justice because my father had raped me was to come out of the incestuous magma and regain the right to exist.
With this new identity, I regained my health, I never had nightmares or somatizations again and I was able to write
The blood of words
and turn the page.
The law of April 2021 has just established an age threshold - at 18 years - below which any incestuous act will not be considered consented.
Do you think, like Christine Angot, that this measure comes to "excuse" the incest committed after the child's 18 years?
No, I don't think that's the “excuse”, the April 2021 law just insists on protecting children and adolescents, who are the most vulnerable.
It seems very important to me.
You are not in favor of imprescribility for sex crimes against minors.
Why ?
The limitation period is set at thirty years from the age of majority of the victim, i.e. up to 48 years.
And the law provides for the establishment of a "staggered prescription", allowing victims for whom the acts would be prescribed, to be able to initiate proceedings if other victims have suffered similar non-prescribed acts committed by the same perpetrator.
This is great progress.
The role of the law is to set limits so that a victim has the choice: to file a complaint or not.
This can be a stimulating limit.
Furthermore, I believe that imprescriptibility should be reserved for genocides.
70% of complaints are dismissed, and there are only 1,000 convictions per year for incest.
Do you think this can change?
I am optimistic.
If the police and gendarmes are better trained to take children's words, their testimony will be a better piece of evidence and legal proceedings will be more successful in protecting children.
You believe that we need a national campaign that recalls the prohibition of incest.
But do you really think it can deter a predator from preying on its victim?
In Germany, a television campaign was aimed at people who had pedophile fantasies, but had not yet acted, giving them a telephone number to call to be taken care of by therapists.
It is a preventive approach, because it should not be addressed only to the victims, but also to the aggressors.
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