• Women who are victims of violence, whether sexual or domestic, can find refuge at the Maison des femmes at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.

  • It is a multi-purpose place where legal advice, gynecological and psychological consultations, yoga or dance workshops and a police station to file a complaint are brought together.

  • There are two other AP-HP women's centers in Paris, within the Bichat hospitals – Claude-Bernard and Hôtel-Dieu.

“I have been coming here for a month.

Before, I felt unbalanced, I wandered in this world, and it's as if I had found my bearings, as if I had reconquered my person, my exact value.

I regained confidence in life.

These words come from Asie*, a fifty-year-old victim of domestic violence for twenty-five years, who, according to her, owes her recovery to the Maison des femmes de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, one of the three structures of Public Assistance – Hospitals de Paris (AP-HP) in Paris opened in recent months where we take care of women who have been shattered by violence.

"A feat" is the word that spontaneously comes to the mouth of Asia, when asked to describe this place, which offers medical, social and legal care thanks to a partnership between the AP- HP, the police, justice, specialized associations and communities such as the Paris City Hall.

Have everything in one place

The advantage of this place, according to the interested parties, is that everything is on site.

"We don't sail from one thing to another, there is a referent person with whom we have an appointment to take stock who brings everything together, I find it great", comments Isabelle *, 45 years old, victim of a rape twenty-four years ago who reappeared on the surface a few months ago.

"The real added value of this structure is to have everything in the same place", also believes doctor Sophie Duchesne, gynecologist, who coordinates this structure.

"Usually there is a multiplication of appointments, it's difficult for them, they often give up because they are mentally tired, and that's when we lose them", also adds Christine, social worker at the women's house for the Aurore association.

In addition to physical care, the women's home provides psychological and psychiatric care, provides legal advice, offers the possibility of filing a complaint on the spot, facilitates requests for medical aid, helps to renew CMU files... And offers a whole panel of therapeutic workshops (yoga, karate, self-esteem, etc.), such as a dance workshop this morning, led by Viola Chiarini, choreographer and dancer-performer who trained as a psychologist and has a master's degree in dance therapy: "It's a workshop that uses the mediation of dance and movement for well-being, to reconnect with oneself at the physical and psychic level.

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“Here, we don't pay attention to form, we don't learn to dance, we use dance for something else,” adds Viola Chiarini.

For example, they can express how they feel through slow, light or heavy movement in a free dance.

“I wanted to attend yoga classes but I didn't have the courage, and then it's expensive… Here, we have workshops almost every day, we don't have time to get bored and think about negative vibes.

When I go home, I come home fulfilled…”, commented Asie.

Multiple combined symptoms

Some women who pass through here have suffered violence that is barely imaginable.

Women with a migratory journey strewn with pitfalls and multiple violence, with serial rapes, and sometimes even sexual violence once they arrive in France, when they come across ill-intentioned people.

Another profile concerns women who have experienced violence in a marital setting, "without history" from the outside, but who in the intimacy have suffered "devaluation every day, constant criticism, the ban on going out the family environment, to see friends, and a strong influence", according to Hugo Bottemanne, head of the psychiatric clinic at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and who also consults at the Maison des femmes.

About 45% of patients contact the structure in a context of domestic violence, 18% in a context of migratory violence, 22% of sexual violence and 13% of intra-family violence.

“The women's house is a place of refuge.

There is extreme violence present in our societies, of which women are the first victims,” said Hugo Bottemanne.

Patients who arrive here often combine multiple symptoms: "Very strong anxiety, sweating, shaking, headaches, fainting, thoughts that come back as in the present moment, negative emotions, and a feeling of 'hypervigilance with the body which can leak', explains the head of department.

“We are well surrounded and well protected”

But the good news is that all of this can be healed, and sometimes at truly astonishing speed, as evidenced by the found life of Asia or the progress of Isabelle, who both found a real sense of protection. “I couldn't sleep anymore, my body was all contracted.

Here, I can finally talk about it.

I feel protected when I go there, I feel like nothing can happen to me.

“People here know how to listen.

We are well surrounded and well protected,” completes Asia in unison.



The success of the system is such that the number of patients has more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, with 292 women welcomed in the first ten months of 2022, compared to 162 over the whole of 2021. There are two other women's centers in the AP-HP, within the Bichat – Claude-Bernard and Hôtel-Dieu hospitals.

A fourth structure will open its doors at the Bicêtre hospital in Val-de-Marne in the first half of 2023.

There was MeToo who went through it, women expressed themselves massively on social networks, and the authorities were forced to follow a minimum, carried away by this momentum of the word finally heard.

Christine, from the Aurore association, is convinced of this: “We have to talk about violence, dare to talk about it.

I think there will be more and more women's houses.

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*Names have been changed

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  • Paris

  • Ile-de-France

  • Violence against women

  • Domestic violence

  • Sexual violence

  • APHP

  • Hospital