• A woman who wanted to file a complaint for sexual violence was called a "whore" by a police officer who had left her a message, believing that she hung up her handset.

  • The case highlights the difficulties encountered by women in denouncing the violence of which they are victims to the police or gendarmes.

  • However, the police and the gendarmerie have been trying for several years to improve the care of victims on their premises.

“She really is a whore!

The “whore” is a 34-year-old woman who went, on the night of February 4 to 5, to the police station of the 5th and 6th arrondissements of Paris to file a complaint after having been sexually assaulted in the street.

The person who insults her on several occasions is none other than a policeman who left a voice message on the answering machine of this teacher asking her to come and complete her complaint.

Believing to have hung up, the official let loose against the complainant who did not wish to be confronted with the arrested suspect.

"Actually, it was just to bust his balls, I'm sure," he told his colleague, before properly hanging up the receiver.

A preliminary investigation has been opened by the prosecution of the chief of non-public insults.

The case, revealed by Mediapart, has once again brought to light the difficulties faced by women who want to report sexist or sexual violence to the police.

The police and the gendarmerie have made efforts in recent years to improve the care and reception of victims on their premises, who can meet with a social worker or a psychologist.

“Nearly 100,000 police officers and gendarmes have been trained to better welcome women in police stations and gendarmeries, and there, this police officer is dirtying the work that is done”, denounced on France Info the Minister Delegate in charge of Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa .

"These remarks, which are filthy, are not representative of the reception and listening that is given to women," she says.

A particularly severe finding

However, the problems encountered by the complainants are not new, as recalled by a study commissioned by the Paris police headquarters at the Regional Observatory of Violence Against Women at the Hubertine-Auclert center.

Entitled "Collaborative diagnosis on the reception of women victims of domestic and/or sexual violence and the assessment of the danger in three police stations in Paris and the inner suburbs", it draws up a particularly severe observation of the way in which this problem is handled by the Parisian police.

Carried out between 2018 and 2019, this inventory was only made public on January 27 by the Paris police headquarters.

"We have observed that there is a real difficulty in listening to the 'victim' as such, from the pre-reception to the filing of a complaint, even during the investigation and in particular during the confrontation in which she is sometimes treated in the same "neutral" way as the respondent", note in particular the authors of this study.

They add that "police officers do not always manage to decipher the behavior of victims and can sometimes assimilate it to ill will or even judge that the victim is not very 'credible' because they do not correspond to the expected profile of a victim " real victim".

Already in April 2018, Group F – a feminist movement launched by activist Caroline de Haas – had received testimonies from around 500 women explaining the difficulties encountered when filing a complaint.

Often, they “were refused” or “had to insist – sometimes a lot – to be able to file a complaint”.

“There is still a lot of progress to be made”

"We obviously still have a lot of progress to make regarding the care of victims of sexual violence, domestic violence, gender-based violence", acknowledged on BFMTV Commissioner Naïma Makri, referent for gender-based and sexual violence at the police headquarters. .

“We are working to put in place various systems to improve this care, in particular systems that allow victims to be taken care of outside the police stations, for those who have difficulty in filing a complaint.

»

According to the commissioner, the prefecture of police also intends to improve "care in the police stations", by training "a maximum of police officers in the specificity of sexual violence" so that they can "collect the victim's words as well as possible and that they do not feel judged”.

For her part, Marlène Schiappa announced in a press release that she intended to make public the entire 2021 edition of the audit on the reception of victims of domestic violence by the police, planned in the Grenelle on this topic.

Society

Sexual assault: A policeman insults a woman who came to file a complaint on his answering machine

Justice

Investigation for "non-public insults" after the insults of a police officer about a woman who came to file a complaint for assault

  • Violence against women

  • Sexual violence

  • Society

  • Marlene Schiappa

  • Gendarmerie

  • Ministry of Interior

  • Police

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