Les violences sexuelles

Abstract

The penal code severely represses all forms of sexual violence. It distinguishes between sexual aggressions and sexual attacks-The exploitation of 275 psychodynamic assessments of perpetrators of sexual violences jointly carried out by two experts led to the following data: The perpetrators were between 12 and 68 years old, 108 were between 12 and 25, 109 between 26 and 40. The parents had left a void in the infantile history of the perpetrators of aggressions. The aggressors came mostly from large families. The conclusions of the assessment make possible to assert that, 50 % of the perpetrators were immature, 90 suffered from psychic troubles, i.e. referring to a form of trouble of the psychiatric nosography. The assessments revealed the existence of a neurotic structure in 20 cases, a perverse structure in 16 cases and a psychotic structure in 9 cases. Studies on the psychopathology of sexual aggressor, in particular Claude Balier's work, reveal the basic anxiety, the personality split, the early trauma (most sexual aggressors have themselves been aggressed in their childhood), the counter-organization to face anxiety. Bernard Cordier's work on pedophilia makes possible to outline a clinical approach. Pedophiles can be divided into three groups : primary or chronic pedophiles, pedophiles with a mental anomaly, reactive or transitory pedophiles. The exploitation of 222 assessments of victims (195 women, 33 men) carried out by us brings forth the following elements: - the large majority of those victims consisted of under 18s, from 3 to 18 years old (72%), out of which 109 were less than 15 years old (47 %). - 106 among the victims had an inadequate father, which amounts to 45 %, close to the 50 % of inadequate fathers among the aggressors. - 24 % of the fathers were described as violent. - 40.8 % of the mothers had died, divorced or separated, which is high for a population of rather young victims. - 6.5 % of the mothers were described as violent. - More than 40 % had ben brought up in a children's home or fostered. - 17.6 % had bad memories or no memories at all of their childhood, 10 % had suffered from maltreatment. - 36 % had had psychic troubles. Those figures show the victims structural fragility, their deficiencies facilitating their aggressors'hold on them. The conclusions of the assessment assert that in 71 % of the cases the aggression had consequences directly linked with it. The 17/06/98 law on the prevention and repression of sexual attacks, and on the protection of under 18s, sets up on the one hand a socio-judicial follow-up for sexual delinquents, on the other hand a real << status >> for the child victim of sexual abuse. If the notion of treatment has made real progress with regard to the victims, absent for too long in the judicial process, the treatment of aggressors, even though the texts seem to be firm about it, is still to be established.