From all the uproar following the Lyhanna affair, this unspeakable tragedy that occurred in the Gers, from the litany of comments heard, admonitions and disapprovals of all kinds, I only remember this blood-curdling figure: every three minutes, in France, a child is the victim of incest, rape or sexual assault. 480 per day. 175,200 over one year. Dizzy.
I can’t seem to assimilate this figure. It’s been running through my mind for days and days. Actually, I don’t understand it. It is implausibly high, so monstrous, that the brain, as if suffocated, cannot grasp its real meaning. It escapes all rationality, it is the expression of a madness which surpasses us, overcomes us, annihilates us. Questions us. Questions us deep within ourselves.
One would already be too many. But the figure of 480 per day appears like a vision of hell, a total disruption of common sense and morality. Crimes of a pedophile nature are unique in that we cannot imagine them. Just as all the perversions of adults, even the most aberrant, the most incongruous, the most scabrous, can find an echo in each of us, even minimal, a very vague and relative feeling of understanding or identification, those inflicted on children drag us into the dark night of the soul. Despite all our efforts, they remain incomprehensible to us, like escapes from another world.
The cruelty of human beings may be infinite, their appetite for violence duly documented, their savagery and barbarity perfectly known, this bestiality, when it is exercised on children, plunges us into abysses of perplexity which leave us distraught and stunned. Even more so when it comes to your own children or those close to your family circle. Once again, we do not understand it, we do not understand by what mechanisms an adult can manage to commit such monstrosities. It is not a laziness of our mind, but an almost physical impossibility to imagine this violence.
That there are crazed pedophiles, irredeemable perverts, people fascinated by the attraction of incest, I could hear it if their number were counted in the dozens. But this is not the case.
What tortuous paths do those who commit it take? How can an adult gifted with reason, however minimal it may be, stoop to committing this sacrilege, the worst possible abjection? What satisfaction does he get from it and, subsequently, once the crime has been committed, how does he manage to silence his conscience, to live with this dirt anchored to his soul? Above all, how is it possible that this species of individual is so numerous? Is this an invariable of the human condition widespread throughout the ages and in all latitudes or a contingency specific to our time?
That there are crazed pedophiles, irredeemable perverts, people fascinated by the attraction of incest, I could hear it if their number were counted in the dozens. But this is not the case. We are talking here about tens of thousands of people, perhaps more, who are affected. So, instead of shouting about the resources allocated to justice, about the insufficiencies of some, about the slowness of the judicial institution, real but ultimately subordinate questions, would we not be wiser to reflect collectively on the origin of these practices in order to try, as best as possible, to circumscribe them?
It’s the act of taking action that appeals to me. That adults are prey to internal deviances in which children occupy a preponderant place, in the extreme, I can conceive. Sexuality always has a dark side. It is a response to a primary, archaic instinct, from which an infinity of fantasies can arise. Sexuality is located at the limit of the borders of the conceivable, it macerates in the swamps of our unconscious, where everything is permitted, authorized, even encouraged.
But, with regard to pedophile acts, how can the fantasy free itself from the barriers decreed by morality and civilization, to flourish in broad daylight and come to fruition without encountering resistance capable of stopping it? Have children therefore become the new playground for adults, the overwhelming majority of men, who, living a narrow sexuality or simply absent from their lives, find there an easy prey to exult in their turn? Is it the loneliness of their lives that accelerates this process? Online pornography? The harshness of society? The expression of a generalized unease, so profound that it blurs all reference points?
We remained at the scum of things without ever questioning the frequency of these crimes. Maybe we can’t.
It is no use training strings of magistrates and giving them all the means necessary to carry out their duties, if we do not tackle this evil by the roots, if we do not attack its deepest causes, these crimes will perhaps be better understood, more regularly punished, but they will always exist. In recent days, I have heard political commentators, jurists, gendarmes, magistrates, lawyers rant, but at no time psychiatrists or sociologists, or even philosophers.
As if, ultimately, it was not the crime itself that was shocking, but the (very real) failings of the judicial institution. We remained at the scum of things without ever questioning the frequency of these crimes. Maybe we can’t. Unless, too afraid to provide an answer to what appears to us to be inconceivable, too weak to face the truth, that of a society in decline where pedophiles abound, we prefer the media hubbub to introspection and reflection. With the obvious risk of seeing the number of abused children soar from year to year…
