March 2017, Zak, an LGBT+ activist, is raped and kidnapped by two former legionnaires in Marseille. January 2018, Michel, a homosexual, was murdered in Jouy-le-Moutier (Val-d’Oise) by a man he met via the Internet. Summer 2018, a gang attacks Vincent in a park in Besançon. In the space of six weeks, eleven other people suffer a similar fate in this place where men come to meet after dark. March 2019, in Drancy, Kevin, coming to meet the man with whom he has been flirting on messaging for several days, is actually greeted by several individuals who beat and stab him. The survivors testify in Traps, invisible crimesthe documentary that Mediapart puts online this Wednesday.
The list could be extended for a long time. Sarah Brethes, Mathieu Magnaudeix and David Perrotin, who co-directed the report, have identified 300 victims of homophobic ambushes over the past five years. For the year 2022 alone, it is even a gayphobic or biphobic attack of this style that was counted every three days. A figure probably below reality because it only takes into account the attacks mentioned in the press.
In May 2021, author and director Matthieu Foucher began compiling in a Twitter thread, articles relating to the murders of homosexuals trapped via apps or on cruising spots, throughout France. “At the time, this alert work had not given rise to any media coverage, he says to 20 minutes. This challenged me because I was giving a turnkey subject and no one took it up. David Perrotin was the only one to mention it in one of his articles for Mediapart. »
“We are going to trap gays to massacre them, humiliate them”
That the news site is devoting a documentary of just over an hour to the subject is therefore “great news” for him. “It is very important that the media take hold of the systemic side of these murders and attacks,” adds Matthieu Foucher. “Systemic”, that is to say that it is a recurring phenomenon, with similar motivations and operating methods that are repeated throughout the territory. The aggressors act out of homophobia, often because they think that their victims, some of whom do not assume their sexual orientation with their loved ones, will be too ashamed to file a complaint.
Sarah Brethes was an AFP journalist in Seine-Saint-Denis when she covered Kevin’s attack, whom she contacted again for the documentary. “A few months earlier, I had followed a case of a homophobic ambush in a housing estate at the Bobigny Criminal Court. I had been struck by the hyperviolence of these two attacks and because this violence – which I thought had disappeared – was premeditated. People got up in the morning saying: “We are going to trap gays to massacre them, humiliate them”. Subsequently, she got in touch with the lawyer for SOS homophobia who told her about dozens of similar cases in Paris, Tarbes, Brive, Marseille and other cities of all sizes. Today, with her colleagues from Mediapart, she wants to “show the extent of this phenomenon and explain why we did not see it. »
“It’s a subject that goes under the radar and that we have long been the only ones to deal with from a systemic angle,” says Thomas Vampouille, editor-in-chief of Stubborn. In its latest issue, the LGBT + magazine also devotes a large file to homophobic ambushes. “We immersed ourselves in our twenty-five years of archives. In November 2000, we had made a file on the “killers of PD”. For a long time, we were the only ones to problematize that, ”he insists.
“A very straight journalistic prism”
And Thomas Vampouille to continue: “The treatment by the regional daily press (PQR) is disparate and always angled under the prism of the news item. The titles sometimes venture into puns – “A man trapped by three funny “cocos””, in reference to the name of the dating site – or in questionable formulations – “The naughty date turns into a massacre »…
“There is a form of contempt and irony. Many of these assaults or murders take place through dating apps or cruising spots, this adds a sexual charge to the case, the scandalous, which seems to allow journalists to make jokes or to insist on the details they will find sordid, is indignant Matthieu Foucher. Society’s fascination/repulsion for gays is found in the journalistic treatment. It’s a very straight prism: “Look, gays go into the woods to do who knows what…” This voyeuristic gaze cuts through empathy and transforms them into juicy news items. While we are talking about assaults and murders. »
“With its straight look, the PQR never thought of raising the systematicity of these cases”, continues Thomas Vampouille. “The mainstream media have also been slow to integrate a queer perspective [non-hétérosexuel] within their newsrooms. It has taken time for LGBT+ journalists to no longer be sidelined, mocked or minimized. Ten years ago, it was difficult to bring out these subjects as such, as objective problems and not just militant questions. The journalists of the current generation of thirty-somethings and young forty-somethings have ended up imposing their legitimacy. »
“I am surprised that it does not appeal to more people on the left”
In Traps, invisible crimes, the witnesses (lawyers, journalists, MPs, etc.) who have no connection with the victims are all gay, as are the two co-directors. “I made the remark to myself, recognizes Sarah Brethes. This subject, it is me, who am a heterosexual woman, who brought it up but we see that, at the university, media and judicial level on the lawyers’ side, it only interests gay people. »
But not all gays, laments Matthieu Foucher: “When I relay some of these murders on social networks, I am surprised that it does not appeal to more people in my political camp, on the left. This is also why the media do not do much about it. The militant fabric does not do its job, or else it does not exist – there are very few specifically gay collectives that really take up these issues. It is also necessary that the PDs of the left seize the questions which concern them, politicize them, reintegrate them into a grid of reading of patriarchal violence. »
The author and director also points out that if “the right-wing media seize on homophobic murders to politicize them in a counterproductive way”, the left-wing media “tend to look the other way”. The latter have, according to him, “a real concern to think about gay questions in a specific way, as if there were a discomfort in talking about gays without necessarily writing LGBT or diluting them in other questions. There is this impression that gays would be privileged, even if we don’t know in relation to whom, on what criteria… If we look at the distribution of violence, we can hardly say to ourselves that they are spared, but this idea is nevertheless widespread, including on the left. »
Awareness “as there was one on feminicides”
Sarah Brethes, she adds that there is “a lack of awareness of the police and justice” who have difficulty in perceiving homophobia as “premeditated and organized. It took a long time to perceive violence against women as such. The newspapers used the expression “crimes of passion”. We don’t talk about it that way anymore and I think that this path we will do on homophobic attacks. »
“If an awareness of these facts, as there was one on feminicides, does not take place after the uplifting documentary from Mediapart, I do not know what more is needed”, advances Thomas Vampouille. For the editor of Stubbornit is essential to “remember that the DPs who are attacked or killed are children, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends… By having relatives of the victims testify, Traps, invisible crimes shows that everyone can be affected. »