Under the hashtag #SciencesPorcs, testimonies of gender-based and sexual violence within IEPs are increasing.

Victims denounce repeated sexual assaults and rapes, unpunished assailants and a silent administration.

Few complaints and reports were sent to justice. 

DECRYPTION

Speech and listening are freed up among Sciences Po students. For several days, testimonies of gender-based and sexual violence, including rape, experienced in IEPs have been flocking to social networks under the hashtag #SciencesPorcs.

Grenoble, Paris, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Bordeaux: no campus is spared by these facts, often repeated and trivialized.

"A collective effort to free speech" in which Léa, a student at Sciences Po Bordeaux, raped by another student in her class, wanted to participate.

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Repeated and trivialized facts

"The very beginning of the year is integration. We do a lot of parties and at that time, with a group of friends, we have all, at different parties been mistreated, even assaulted, even forced, by a boy who was in my class to do sexual acts, or touched without our various consent ", she confides.

“It was very violent for us because we arrived in the euphoria of the first year, of entering higher education and adult life and we were quickly confronted with this violence. "

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This freedom of speech and the multiplicity of testimonies does not surprise the young woman.

"When I arrived in first year, I was told very clearly, by women who were in third or fourth year, to be careful in the evenings, to pay attention to integration, to be careful at weekends. CRITT, which is the inter-science sports competition, I'm not even talking to you about it, "says Léa, pointing to the recurrence of these facts in the IEPs. 

Few complaints filed

Despite the avalanche of testimonies, like gender-based and sexual violence, few victims have dared to file a complaint or report the facts to justice.

Last Saturday, a complaint was filed in Toulouse for rape, leading to the immediate opening of an investigation.

A student explains that she was the victim of another, older student.

As soon as the director of the IEP in Toulouse, Olivier Brossard, learned of the information, he claims to have accompanied this young girl who first wanted to remain anonymous.

"I also let him know that I was going to file a complaint anyway as the law requires us to do, with article 40," he explains to the microphone of Europe 1. "From there, she was accompanied by me and a colleague, who deals with these questions. She walked along and ended up filing a complaint. "

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The IEP in Strasbourg reported to justice last week facts dating back to 2019 between several students.

The victim does not wish to file a complaint for the moment.

In Grenoble, two reports to the prosecutor's office are to be noted, dating from January 25 and February 8.

The public prosecutor, Eric Vaillant, will soon summon the two young women to hear them and suggest that they file a complaint.

"I welcome these campaigns on social networks when they are for a noble cause", assures the magistrate.

"This allows everyone to be affected, but after that there must be criminal investigations, that the victims file a complaint otherwise we can not do anything."

In the other cities concerned: Rennes, Aix en Provence or Bordeaux, no complaint was registered.  

IEP Bordeaux sets up a working group

More generally, the Institution is in turmoil.

Many victims testify to the administration's silence and the lack of listening.

An inertia defended by the IEP of Bordeaux.

The officials met with representatives of the mixed feminist association with an intersectional vocation of the IEP Sexprimons-Nous, explains Jean Petaux, director of communication, external and institutional relations at Sciences Po Bordeaux.

"The director of Sciences-Po Bordeaux, Yves Déloye, expressed both our amazement and our great benevolence with regard to the testimonies", assures the director of communication.

"On February 11, a joint working group bringing together the eight managers of the Sexprimons-Nous association and eight managers from Sciences Po Bordeaux set to work under the chairmanship of the Gender Equality officer to improve our procedures."

If the IEP has been advocating zero tolerance for a long time, "we still need to improve our procedures," concedes Jean Petaux.

"Trust must be effectively installed with student associations, which have a very important role to play."

Within the Bordeaux campus, a card with the emergency number of a monitoring and listening unit created in 2018 is given to each student at the start of the year.

But the difference between the testimonies and the reports within this cell surprised the teaching teams.

"Twenty cases of all kinds for the monitoring and listening cell since 2018, including 4 cases of confirmed sexist and sexual violence, and a mass of much more important testimonies," he notes.

"It may be that it is easier to write a testimony in front of your screen and to confide in a Facebook page, than to take the step to go to a monitoring unit and listen to an institution", he imagines.

"We must combine skills, ensure that the radars are as complete as possible, that nothing happens and that there is also the ability to respond very quickly to requests."