On January 23, 2021, Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of an Independent Commission on Incest and Child Sexual Abuse (CIIVISE). It was tasked with collecting the stories of victims and drawing up public policy recommendations based on these testimonies. Almost three years later, its final report contains eighty-two recommendations, which were officially presented to Charlotte Caubel, the French Junior Minister for Children, on Friday, November 17.
The colossal report, produced by the commission under the co-presidency of magistrate Edouard Durand and social worker Nathalie Mathieu, is 600 pages long. Their team compiled nearly 30,000 testimonies received through hearings, telephone interviews, written submissions, online questionnaires and public meetings held monthly in French cities.
The commission drew its conclusions based not only on these accounts but also on social science research and literary works on the subject. The report analyzes the dynamics of child sexual abuse – particularly in cases of incest – and their consequences, before presenting measures to improve child protection.
The CIIVISE’s doctrine is clear given the title of the report, “Sexual Violence against Children: ‘We believe you’,” resolutely positioning the organization on the side of victims. “Incest is a crime that is invisible to legislators, and therefore to society […] Faced with this emergency, to remedy these confusions, lift the curtain on denial and finally put words to this unnameable subject, the CIIVISE has sought to rethink incest and define its specific features so as to give an account of the full range of forms that this violence takes, and of its pervasive consequences,” the report reads.
A widespread phenomenon rooted in denial
What exactly are we talking about? To illustrate the scale of the phenomenon, the report cites a number of recent figures, notably drawn from a 2020 survey carried out by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) for the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE). One person in ten was sexually abused as a child. This affects 5.4 million adult men and women. The family is the primary context in which such abuses take place (81% of perpetrators are family members, 22% are close friends, 11% come from an institutional context and 8% from the context of public places, according to victims, some of whom report several perpetrators). Every year, 160,000 children are victims of sexual violence – particularly of incest – the commission has been hammering home for months.
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