The French government this week launched a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of sexual violence against children. The stark messaging is the first to refer specifically to incest, which has long been a taboo subject in public debate.
Messages and videos will be posted on social media and placed in newspapers, on billboards and at cinemas. A TV campaign will be broadcast at half-time during a France match at the ongoing Rugby World Cup.
It includes a video of a young girl describing being told by her abuser to keep "our little secret".
Charlotte Caubel, France's junior minister in charge of child issues, said she had wanted a hard-hitting message like those used to prevent road deaths – one that would "punch our fellow citizens in the gut".
"It's the first time that the government uses the word 'incest' in a campaign, the first time it mentions sexual violence inside families," she told French news agency AFP.
'Everybody's fight'
An estimated 160,000 children are victims of sexual abuse in France every year, while associations say that one in every ten adults in France has experienced incest.
"This means you meet people every day who were victims of incest or who committed incest," Caubel said.
By the end of the campaign "nobody will be able to say 'I didn't know'", she said: "This must become everybody's fight."
Toutes les trois minutes, un enfant est victime de viol, d'inceste ou d'agression sexuelle.⁰Autour de vous, sans le savoir, vous connaissez des enfants victimes, vous connaissez des adultes auteurs. #BrisonsLeSilence, partagez cette campagne et appelez le 119 au moindre doute. pic.twitter.com/DYljC8WhvT
— Charlotte Caubel (@CharlotteCaubel) September 12, 2023
In France, incest – defined as sexual relations of a person with a parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, sibling or half-sibling – is legal as long as it occurs between consenting adults.
But in case of rape or sexual abuse committed against a minor, courts typically lengthen prison terms if the assault was also incestuous.
Breaking the silence
Several French filmmakers, writers and actors have recently come out against what they say has been a taboo in France, where incest has often been considered a private family matter.
Well-known French actor Emmanuelle Beart was a victim of incest as a child, she revealed in a documentary to air on French channel M6 later this month.
Beart does not identify her attacker in the documentary, called "Un Silence Si Bruyant" ("Such a resounding silence"), which also includes the stories of four other incest victims.
A drive to break the silence around incest gained ground in 2021, triggered partly by the publication of an explosive memoir by lawyer Camille Kouchner in which she accused her stepfather, prominent French intellectual Olivier Duhamel, of raping her twin brother when they were teenagers.
The Independent Commission on Incest and Child Sexual Abuse (Ciivise) was created that year to formulate policies that would better protect children.
After interviewing 11,400 victims and 40 experts, it made several recommendations to establish a "culture of protection" in France, including specific mechanisms allowing doctors to report warning signs, a requirement for judges to watch recordings of victim testimony rather than reading transcripts, and better psychological support for victims.
'Public problem'
Edouard Durand, a judge and co-president of Ciivise, called the government's new campaign "brave" and praised it for not downplaying suffering.
It is "crucial that in this campaign the government says that incest exists, and that's it's a public problem, not a private one", he told AFP.
The French government has said it will boost funding to support groups helping abused children.
Parliament has also begun examining a draft law that would strip anyone found guilty of abusing their child of their parental authority.
(with AFP)
