A poll conducted by Ipsos in November 2020 found that 1 in 10 French people were a victim of sexual violence during their childhood.

In a report published in the French newspaper "Le Monde", writer Soline Cordier said that dealing with the issue of incest is still a red line in our contemporary society.

While most of us think that this is a rare occurrence, studies conducted on this topic show that between 5% and 10% of French people were victims of sexual violence during their childhood, 80% of whom were in the family.

The victims of these attacks are children, regardless of their gender or social background.

Studies show that children are exposed to this type of abuse for the first time on average at the age of 9 years, and in most cases the perpetrators are male, and this was confirmed by a report published in December 2020 issued by the National Observatory of Delinquency and Criminal Responses, based on statistics made by police units.

Between 2016 and 2018, it was found that 95% of the total 6,737 people accused of committing sexual violence crimes were male.

The study also indicates that out of a total of 4,341 victims of incestuous sexual violence, 77% are girls, half of whom are less than 4 years old.

Referring to the seriousness of the phenomenon, Isabelle Aubry, founding president of Fez a Lancet, affirmed that "one out of every 3 French has been a victim of incest," while in fact the number far exceeds official statistics.

Women who are victims of childhood domestic violence have an increased risk of experiencing sexual harassment or sexual violence in adulthood (Getty Images)

Great damage

The report sheds light on the devastating effects of attacks on children by so-called "incest".

According to Catherine Millar, director of the "SOS Foundation", the child is subjected to complete destruction and distortion of his psychological and physical identity, in addition to the difficulty of the child victim realizing the seriousness and effects of this type of abuse.

The close relationship between the aggressor and the victim often leads to repeated incidents.

Sexual assault leads to a series of effects that worsen as the victim gets older, usually prone to psychological problems such as depression, increased risk of suicide, eating disorders, and the development of addictive behavior.

All too often, incest victims face great difficulty building a balanced professional and family life.

A survey conducted by the National Institute for Demographic Studies in 2015 demonstrated that women who are victims of childhood sexual violence have an increased risk of experiencing sexual harassment or violence in adulthood.

In addition, incest victims may turn into adulthood as aggressors and victims to perpetrators.

According to anthropologist Dorothy Dossi, who has researched this subject for years and conducted dozens of interviews with victims and perpetrators of attacks, "incest perpetrators always commit these attacks in the family, which is a frequent occurrence among its members."

The author quoted sociologist Sylvie Cromer, the coordinator of a study on the topic published in a magazine affiliated with the National Center for Scientific Research and submitted in 2017 to Lawrence Rossignol, then Minister of Family, that "there is no typical pathway for incest victim ... but the trauma can be addressed. This violence causes it through early care that is proportional to the victims. "

Incest is still a taboo topic in the French media, and less severe terms are often used to refer to it, such as "domestic violence" or "abuse" (Getty Images)

'Collective denial'

It is difficult to uncover the issue of incest, which seems to be still a taboo subject until now.

In response to a question posed by parliamentarian Alexandra Lewis of the Republic Forward party in the context of an evaluation of the 2018 law on sexual violence, Eva Thomas - one of the first victims of incest and among those encouraged to reveal what they have been subjected to - said: “Incest is a collective denial. Incest is the law of silence. We cannot think about it, or utter the unimaginable. For this reason, we resort to the phrase “domestic violence”, or we treat it as sexual violence, and we often use the word “abuse.” Even in the media, what "It is still considered a taboo. The child's cries remain unheard while this epidemic spreads in silence."

The author pointed out that silence about incest is a very common phenomenon, but the difficulty of acknowledging its existence is related to the association of the family image in our minds with the idea of ​​a safe haven, because for us the family cannot be a place of oppression and violence.