TESTIMONY
Will the profession of sexual assistant for people with disabilities one day be legalized and supervised? On February 1, on Europe 1, the Secretary of State for Persons with Disabilities Sophie Cluzel said she was in favor of "allowing us to support the intimate life of people with disabilities", and announced that they had contacted the National Committee Ethics Advisory Board (CCNE) in this sense. Such progress has long been demanded from APPAS, the Association for the Promotion of Sexual Support, which has trained 18 caregivers, including four men, for several years. One of them, Fabrice, came to testify on Europe 1, with Adeline, a young disabled woman whom he assisted. Through this relationship, assures the latter, "I could regain possession of my body".
"Fabrice, it's not sex. It's a whole thing"
Now 33, Adeline was 25 when she learned she had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a form of myopathy. A revelation that will blow his couple apart. "My partner did not manage and preferred to break up. Then I stayed for five years without having sexual intercourse," she testified, confident that she felt "very alone", and that she felt "an emotional lack huge". Determined to use an "escort" to "have a little tenderness", the young woman falls during her research on the APPAS website, which puts her in contact with Fabrice, one of the four male companions trained by the association.
This meeting, explains Adeline, "has changed a lot of things", first by bringing her "affection and listening" through their first exchanges, then through the sexual assistance provided by Fabrice. "I was able to reconnect with my body, and tell myself that it was able to give me nice things and still please me," she says. And to specify: "Fabrice, it is not sex, it is a whole".
Pay "allows to put a frame"
In 2013, the National Consultative Ethics Committee gave an unfavorable opinion to sexual assistants, on the grounds inter alia that it was "not possible to make sexual aid a professional situation like the others because of the principle of no -market use of the human body ". But for Adeline, paying Fabrice on the contrary allows her to "set a frame" and avoid a possible romantic attachment. "It puts limits and makes it impossible to see each other every morning," she adds, while "Fabrice made sure that I could detach myself from him, but without bumping into me." "We cannot consider this as vulgar prostitution," insists Adeline.
This first experience with a sexual assistant also allowed him to advance in his personal and romantic life. "I" may have wanted to make myself pretty, to please again, "she explains, adding that I later found the courage to seduce a man." This is the heart of the approach of sex assistants " , abounds Fabrice: "restore confidence, regain femininity, and realize that the body can regain pleasure and sensuality". "It works every time," he said, returning to the dozen women with whom he worked.