There is Géraldine, killed by two rifle bullets in front of her 10-year-old daughter. Razia, whose body was riddled with 19 stab wounds in the middle of the street. Seloua beaten with punches and who will not survive. Their common point? Their murderer is none other than their companion or ex-companion. Over the past sixteen years, in France, 2,228 women have, like them, been killed by their (ex)-spouse. In Our Absentees, at the origin of feminicides*, which appears this Friday, Laurène Daycard went to meet the relatives of the victims, those who survived, but also the perpetrators of violence to try to understand what is at work in these crimes which go beyond the simple “facts various “. An essay as committed as it is intimate to show the systemic nature of this violence. Encounter.
Over the past sixteen years, more than 2,200 women have been killed by their companion or ex-companion in France. Crimes, which contrary to an idea that has circulated for a long time, are in no way related to love or passion…
Yes, these expressions “crime of passion”, “drama of passion” have no meaning. How can the idea of killing someone be associated with a form of love? Rather, they are crimes of possession. In many cases, the breakup – or at least the will to take one’s freedom and emancipate oneself – acts as a trigger for acting out. It refers to what is expected of the other in a couple situation. All these stories are those of men, who sometimes do not even consider themselves perpetrators of domestic violence, and who, one day, will claim the right of life and death over the woman they are supposed to love. .
You explain in your book that many feminicides are “super-killings”. What do you mean ?
I noticed that there is often a relentlessness of the murderer on the body of his victim. This is for example the story of Razia: she was killed in Besançon, in the middle of the street, with 19 stab wounds by her ex-husband. It’s not just a killing, it’s linked to the notion of gender and the fact that it’s a crime against women’s bodies. This is also the very origin of the concept of feminicide: the murder of a woman by a man for a misogynistic motive, not only in the private sphere. In France, this term was popularized in 2019 when it was elected “word of the year” by the Petit Robert but it is actually an Anglo-Saxon concept that was born in the 70s. It was then much developed by South American thinkers, notably one, Marcela Lagarde, who introduced the notion of impunity. In his eyes, femicide is a state crime, because it refers to everything that has not been done to protect these women: the authorities who fail in their role of protection, but also the climate of trivialization of gender-based violence that we let settle.
So feminicides don’t only concern the private sphere?
No, even if in France the term is mainly used in this sense. It also comes from the numbers. In 2019, half of the women killed in France were killed in a marital context. For comparison, this represents 3.5% of men.
You spent a month in Arras, following an accountability course for perpetrators of domestic violence. Reading you, we have the feeling that all these men are locked in a form of denial…
The field of conjugal violence is strewn with multiple aberrations and one of the most striking is the reversal of the feeling of guilt: the victims will blame themselves for what they undergo – this is what explains, at least partially, the low complaint rate – and perpetrators tend to victimize and wallow in a form of denial. They will refuse their full responsibility, unless there is work, which can sometimes take years, to understand what happened in the passage to the violent act. These men will, for example, claim to have been pushed to the limit or that their partner behaved badly. Sometimes they completely reverse the situation. At his trial, the murderer of Razia, who therefore killed her with 19 stab wounds, claimed that it was she who was carrying the weapon. It is false, it is fact. He made this speech as their children attended the trial.
How do you view thecase of LFI deputy Adrien Quatennens, sentenced to four months in prison suspended for violence committed against his ex-partner? Did his speech remind you of those you heard during the empowerment courses?
I don’t believe that he was sentenced to one of these accountability courses, in any case, I have not seen this information anywhere. The words he uses, particularly in his interview at the Voice of the North are actually quite symptomatic of a perpetrator of domestic violence on emerging from his conviction: he recognizes a slap, but never clearly says anywhere that he is the perpetrator of domestic violence, when he has been convicted for it. He evokes “lovely SMS” for something that could be akin to a form of harassment against the backdrop of a breakup. He assures that it is not a “story of domestic violence”, but that of “a couple who can no longer understand each other”. This sentence, I heard almost the same at the accountability course. The psychologist in charge of the sessions had immediately replied that justice does not deal with couple problems but with cases in which there is a complaint and that it is serious.
In your book, you describe domestic violence as something insidious. Many victims are unaware that they are or take years to realize…
We often tend to associate domestic violence with physical violence. It’s very reductive and can therefore be dangerous when it isolates other victims. Domestic violence is part of a much broader context of domination. An American researcher, Evan Stark, developed the concept of coercive control. He takes the image of a cage in which the victims would be locked up. Each bar would be an aspect of domestic violence: physical, strategy of intimidation or isolation, economic or daily life control…
During my investigation, for example, I met several women from very privileged social backgrounds who told me that they had taken a long time to recognize themselves as victims despite the feeling of fear in which they lived. One of them lived in a mansion. She told me that her husband turned off the gas when he left on the move, forcing her and her children to live in an icy house. She had to heat water in the kettle to wash them. Paradoxically, he regularly offered her clothes or jewelry because there was a need for representation. One day, he killed their dog in front of his eyes because he had tried to run away. She took it as a threat: “This is what will happen if you escape.” You don’t necessarily have to raise your hand on a woman to break her. What I’m trying to show in this book is this continuum of violence: murder is what happens at the very end, when these behaviors are trivialized.
On the question of denial, it’s hard not to make the connection with a scene of rape that you say you suffered when you were a student. You do not, however, use the word rape in your pages. Why ?
Yes, it is a rape but I obviously did not feel the need to write this word to speak of my own experience. I wrote it the way I wanted to tell it, without ever having any doubt about how this experience will be interpreted by readers. I shared this memory because I know it will speak to others, including in the way chosen to tell it.
Reading your work, one has the feeling that the women who have tried to denounce the violence were abandoned by the police and the courts. A 2019 report from the General Inspectorate of Justice reveals that 82% of complaints or handrails filed by victims of marital feminicide were unsuccessful.
Too many times, complaints have not resulted in responses from the authorities. This is, for example, the case of Géraldine Sohier who was killed in 2016 by firearm. A few weeks earlier, she had made a report to the gendarmerie, her children had mentioned these weapons but nothing was done and she was killed with one of them. In Razia’s case, there were seven complaints, six from her, the last from her lawyer. At first, the case was handled very well, she was sheltered, but it’s random. It was a letter from Social Security who revealed to her ex-husband where she had taken refuge with her children. He harassed them again. According to the Solidarité Femmes network, when she went to the police station to report it, she was told that it was “just a father who wanted to see his children”. She was still under a protective order.
Your investigation began in 2016. Since then, there has been the MeToo movement, the Grenelle of violence against women. Have you noticed an evolution in the care of victims?
Of course, when I started working on feminicide in 2016, most people didn’t even know what it was! There is today a general awareness despite multiple shortcomings. Budgets allocated to training and care for victims have increased. The Grenelle made it possible to take into account a central problem, that of recidivism. A male perpetrator often has several victims and a conviction does not necessarily stop the acting out. On the contrary, it sometimes leads to a feeling of victimization. The Grenelle led to the creation of around thirty treatment centers for perpetrators of domestic violence. But when we talk about progress, we must not forget that the consideration of domestic violence in France is very recent. The first statistical report on violent deaths within the couple dates from 2006: before this date, we could not know what was the proportion of men and women who died within the couple.
You’re not kind to the press either…
Indeed, for a long time journalists allowed themselves to make humor about this violence, even these murders. When I started my work, you could regularly read in the press titles like: “She struggles on the crossword, he electrifies her”, “She annoyed her companion, he kills her and puts her in a trash can” … This contributes to the process of dehumanization that is at work in domestic violence. In 2016, journalist Sophie Gourion opened a web page – “Les mots tuent” – to list all these titles. Things have changed, the association Prenons la Une has drawn up a charter on the treatment of these murders. There has been media awareness but there are still a few hiccups. For example, at 20 minutes, you published an article on January 6: “She refuses to cook him an omelette, he hits her with a vacuum cleaner”. How can we still do this in 2023? [Cette brève a effectivement été publiée sous ce titre et ce dernier a rapidement été modifié. Elle a été dépubliée de tous nos réseaux. ]