Paris (AFP)

At the end of a year of investigation into feminicides, Le Monde prepared a device on several media to present the fruit of its investigations: a supplement to the paper journal, a great story on its site and a documentary broadcast on France 2 Tuesday .

"There is a really necessary awareness around this violence which is a massive phenomenon, with 220,000 complaints per year for domestic violence which is still enormous", explains to AFP Lorraine de Foucher, journalist at Le Monde and co -maker of the documentary "Feminicides".

The journalist was made aware of this phenomenon by drawing a portrait a few years ago of the psychiatrist and forensic scientist Alexia Delbreil, the first French doctor-researcher to have launched a study on conjugal homicides: "It was the first who did emerge from the points of convergence, the first to uncover a criminal pattern. "

At the start of 2019, Le Monde launched an investigation unit made up of a dozen journalists to study the issue of feminicides by investigating the 120 feminicides identified in 2018.

"The idea was to go and interview relatives, gendarmes, police, magistrates ... in search of the recurrence points that we found between all these murders," explains Lorraine de Foucher.

"File by file, our journalists try to reconstruct the facts, the stories, the routes, and above all look for what has not been done, or what could have been done, by the police, the justice system, social services, in order to prevent these murders. With a conviction: a large part of these feminicides could be avoided, if French society gave itself the means ", estimated the director of the editions of the World Luc Bronner in a point of stage published on the site.

These surveys will be published in a 14-page supplement to the journal dated May 31-June 1 and 2, which will be released on Saturday. The web story will be posted on Tuesday, the day the documentary airs on France 2.

- "Property crime" -

"Feminicide is neither exercised by love nor by madness, it is a property crime", says Laetitia Casta, who dubbed the documentary, in the first minutes.

Of the hundreds of murders screened by the cell, five cases have been selected for this documentary co-produced by Bangumi (production company of Yann Barthès) and Le Monde, a first for the newspaper.

How were they chosen? "These are emblematic cases, which tell different sides of the phenomenon of feminicides. The relatives also had to agree to speak because we are working on very recent events and these are deeply traumatic facts, it takes a lot of courage to tell them to people we have never seen, "explains the director.

Absolute control of the spouse, annihilation of the victims, loopholes in the judicial system, failure to take care of the perpetrators, the documentary dissects the mechanics of conjugal homicides through these five murders, from Alsace to Sarthe via the States -United States and Armenia.

Statistical data punctuate the film: 41% of the victims had reported their fears to the police, 30% of the perpetrators had already been convicted of acts of violence, 80% of the complaints communicated were dismissed, 3 out of 4 femicides are committed during or after separation.

"The idea is also to say that behind a man who kills his wife, it is the whole society that has failed to prevent it and that we are all a little responsible collectively", underlines the director.

This will be the subject of the debate moderated by Julian Bugier on Tuesday, with in particular the Secretary of State for Gender Equality Marlène Schiappa, the former magistrate Luc Frémiot and relatives of the victims. It will be followed by a documentary on the house of violent men, a support structure for perpetrators of domestic violence.

© 2020 AFP