Following the suicide of a friend of hers who had been raped as a teenager, Homayra created Innocence in Danger.
An association helping children who are victims of sexual violence and abuse.
On "La Libre antenna" of Europe 1, Homayra tells about his fight against pedocriminality.
TESTIMONY
Homayra is the founder of Innocence in Danger, an association for the protection of children against sexual violence and mistreatment. Her fight against child crime was born after one of her friends committed suicide because she had been raped when she was a teenager. At the microphone of Olivier Delacroix, on "La Libre antenna" of Europe 1, Homayra tells the genesis and the daily life of her fight against child crime that she has been leading for twenty years. A fight that she started in France and that she extended to Europe, then to the world.
>> Listen to Homayra's testimony in full here
"I was made aware of the subject of child crime a long time ago. I am of Iranian origin. When there was the revolution in Iran, my parents thought that we would be safer abroad. We came to France with my sister and other friends We were young teenagers We had a very sheltered childhood We were very innocent we didn't know what a man and a woman could do together.
During a lunch at the restaurant, we were six or seven girls, we were approached by a very elegant woman, older than us.
She offered to have dinner with a man she pointed out to us, telling us that if we accepted, he would give us so much.
I wasn't interested, I didn't want to eat with someone I didn't know.
This young woman gave her phone number to everyone before leaving.
I forgot this story.
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I thought there were only girls who were raped
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Five or six years later, one of my Iranian friends, who had just got married, took her own life.
She had left me a letter, because we were very close, in which she explained to me that she had gone to these dinners to be able to continue paying her rent and her studies.
It was a trap.
She was raped.
She was telling me that if she could have talked to someone she trusted, maybe she wouldn't have done this.
But she found herself alone, defiled and although her husband was a wonderful man, she did not believe that she could love or be loved.
I blamed myself for not having seen anything of my friend's dismay during all these years.
I thought that if one day I worked, it would be to be this person who takes the hand of someone like my friend, who becomes a listener, a shoulder, an outstretched hand.
At the time, I thought there were only girls who were raped.
I was a thousand miles from imagining the gravity and extent of this phenomenon.
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I wanted real engagement, not on paper or in words
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I started my activity within Unesco, which I left after a year because Unesco could not be in the field.
Me, I like to act.
I wanted to meet the victims and their parents.
I wanted real engagement, not on paper or in words.
So I founded Innocence en Danger, a 1901 law association, first in France, then in a few other European countries and even in the United States.
It's a very difficult subject, but it's a magnificent subject: what is more beautiful in the world than to save a life, to save a child, to allow a child to have a second childhood, a real childhood, because the one he had was trampled on.
It has become a passion.
An everyday passion for over twenty years.
I do this job effortlessly, I love what I do.
We have a magnificent team of lawyers, volunteers and therapists in France.
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Internet has abolished the distance which separates a predator from a victim
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The arrival of the Internet in homes in all European countries twenty years ago has not helped.
The Internet has abolished the distance that separates a predator from a potential victim.
Social media is not doing enough to protect children.
We need to watch our children.
The rise of cyber-pedocriminality is very important in France.
France is the third country in the world to host child pornography sites since the laws are not very severe.
Unfortunately, the images of rape circulating on the Internet are not virtual.
Behind every picture, there is a child who has been raped.
We wrote a manifesto with Karl Zéro and Serge Garde.
They are journalists with whom I have worked since the beginning of Innocence in Danger in France.
The manifesto is called "1 in 5".
1 in 5 is the number of children who have been sexually assaulted before the age of 18 in Europe.
This figure comes from a study carried out by the Council of Europe.
It is a scary, frightening and shocking number, but it has to be accepted.
We have to be able to talk about this phenomenon, as we talk about other very unpleasant subjects.
>> Find Olivier Delacroix's Libre antenna in replay and podcast here
These acts have very harmful consequences, not only for the victims and their entourage, but for society as a whole.
Sexual violence against children has a cost to society which is borne by all of us.
As parents, grandparents, citizens, human beings, but also as the child that we have been, we must have the courage to look this subject in the face, because we do not have no choice.
Victims carry these sexual assaults on and on them for a lifetime.
When we give the figure of 1 in 5 to speak of the victims on European soil, there is another frightening figure which is revealed, that of the number of adults who have raped these children.
It puts us face to face with a Europe that needs to be healed.
There are countries where things are particularly bad.
Unfortunately, France is part of it because it does not properly condemn these people.
We must join hands to move towards a healthy society.
Our children are our future and we need to protect them better.
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