“I’m not saying that we should put everyone in prison, but we must leave the latitude to the abused to be able to speak and be heard”. With the publication of her first novel “I am not your mother”, Rosemonde Pierre-Louis has chosen to break the omerta around sexual violence against minors. Without misery, she retraces her childhood first in Haiti then in Paris and recounts the rapes of which she was the victim at the age of 5, 6 and 12 years old.
At 43, the business manager has been able to rebuild herself and “does not do too badly”, she wishes to free the floor: “How many of us have committed suicide? Have risky or deviant sexual behaviors? but also to change the law. In France, a minor can file a complaint for sexual assault up to ten years after his majority, if he was 15 years old or more at the time of the facts or twenty years after his majority if he was under 15 years old. For rape of a minor, the limitation period is thirty years, but can be extended if the same perpetrator subsequently rapes another minor.
“Twenty years, fifty or even indefinitely, we will never have enough proof”
But, for Rosemonde Pierre-Louis, imprescriptibility is essential. This could create a “prevention of knowing that, whatever happens, at some point, someone will speak” and recalls that victims take between fifteen and seventeen years before beginning to realize what they sustained. Regarding the steps and evidence requested years after the fact, “whether at twenty, fifty or even indefinitely, we will never have enough”.
The end of the statute of limitations would mean for her that the victims are taken into consideration, that society understands their pain and believes that “it is absolutely not fair to let people go free [les agresseurs] live their life as if nothing had happened. The writer does not pose as a “vigilante” but wants a real reflection on this subject.
“Before forgetting, you have to understand. Also wonder about why people attack? Do they have full powers or are they reproducing violence that they themselves have suffered? Do they continue because we let them act? “A work” almost psychological but imperative to move forward “that Rosemonde Pierre-Louis accomplishes in her novel.
Find the video interview with Rosemonde Pierre-Louis at the top of the article.