The story seems unlikely. And if it is true, it constitutes rape and an act of child abuse. Since the beginning of September and the context of moral panic in Belgium around sexuality education classes, very viral videos have been circulating on TikTok and Facebook. They tell the story of an educator or professor who allegedly encouraged a boy to get naked in front of his first grade class, alongside a little girl. The boy was allegedly asked to touch his friend’s genitals, “to try to insert a finger into her” during a sexuality education class.
No new law in France on sexuality education
On TikTok, the videos of this anonymous testimony last approximately two minutes, a post has, for example, been “liked” more than 6,200 times. A person, his face completely blurred and his voice modified, introduces himself as the father of this boy. He explains that he “freaked out” when his son told him about this scene and went to the director’s office “to break everything”. The latter allegedly told him that it was “obligatory now with the new law”. However, there is no “new” legislation of this type in France. Enshrined in law since 2001, sexuality education does not take place at all as this story tells it. We will come back to this.
The one who presents himself as the father of the child explains that he went to Spain and does not want to testify openly, because “there are plenty of people who agree with this bullshit, with these pedophiles”. In the comments, Internet users support or doubt this story, which is very vague and which can neither be precisely located nor dated.
A video deleted, but went viral
A TikToker named Furinezz took up this story to denounce “all this mess”. According to him, the scene takes place in a primary school in Bergerac, in Dordogne. He has since deleted the video from his account, but it was widely shared on Facebook or on the Chinese social network to denounce the Evras law in Belgium (which, remember, does not at all encourage children to touch each other in class). Thus, a montage shared 6,500 times and published on a Facebook page of a Rennes groupresumes his video and sees in it proof “of pedophilia perpetrated by the government” with “sexuality education at school (Evras law), in kindergarten”.
We contacted the TikToker to find out where he got these elements from: he told us that he had taken the testimony “on a Spanish video site”. However, faced with Internet users believing that it was false and “after two days of searching for information”, he decided to remove the content “while waiting for the person in question to actually show up”. “If my content sometimes seems conspiratorial, I prefer to rely on minimally verifiable clues,” he defends himself.
“This testimony has no reality, it’s nauseating”
When contacted, the rectorate of the Bordeaux academy, on which the Dordogne depends, replied “that there is no evidence to support any of these assertions”. The primary school teachers’ unions in Nouvelle-Aquitaine also tell us that they have not received any reports on this subject. “This testimony has no reality, it’s nauseating,” says Jean-François Bourdoncle, general delegate of Sgen-CFDT Aquitaine.
The sexuality education sessions have, moreover, nothing to do with the scene described, especially in primary school. There latest circular of the Ministry of National Education on the subject, which dates from September 30, 2022, aims to recall the importance of these sessions, the effectiveness of which “remains very uneven” in recent years, it is noted. However, students are “often confronted with sexist and even degrading representations” on the Internet. The circular recalls that three sexuality education sessions adapted to the age of the children and the level of education must be organized each year.
In elementary school, the implementation of these sessions is presented to the school council and to parents during the back-to-school meeting. “At this age level, it is not explicit sexuality education,” emphasizes a circular from 2018. Several themes can be addressed taking into account the age of the students, such as the study and respect of the body, the notion of intimacy and respect for private life, morphological differences, equality between girls and boys. boys, prevention of gender-based and sexual violence, etc.