“The fight against sexual violence should go through a collective reflection on the way families are organised”

2024-10-10 07:15:00

theThe Mazan rape trial once again sheds light on the extent of sexual violence in our societies and calls into question their relationship with dysfunctions at different levels: social, marital and family. It raises in particular the question of the connection between these rapes and history, as well as the relational environment in which some of the defendants grew up. Obviously it is not a question of placing oneself “on the side” of the authors by justifying their actions, but of providing elements of understanding coming from clinical practice and corroborated by scientific literature.

Some accused of the Mazan rapes – including the main defendant – say they suffered violence in childhood – including sexual violence – and/or grew up in incestuous families. These biographical elements combine with the stories of the patients that we health workers encounter in the systems for minors and adults who are perpetrators of sexual violence. We care for men, in the vast majority of cases, very often in the context of criminally ordered treatment before or after a sexual offense conviction.

The majority of these patients have suffered emotional, verbal, physical or sexual violence, in agreement with what we find in the literature: this population has a higher victimization rate than the general population, but also higher than the population of non-offenders sexual. In their journeys we see a lot of domestic violence or other forms of family vulnerability such as, for example, parents with psychiatric disorders or addictions. These different forms of violence are very often combined. It is important to underline that only a minority of people who have suffered such violence become perpetrators of sexual violence.

Disturbed relational environments

For doctors, the incestuous dimension is central to understanding the path of perpetrators of sexual violence: whether they themselves were victims in their childhood, or whether they grew up, or whether one or two of their parents grew up in an incestuous family. These families are in fact characterized by the profoundly transgressive nature of the bonds that unite the members together: this calls into question the inclusion of the subjects in the structuring of filiation and affiliation bonds. Future perpetrators of sexual violence have a disturbed relationship with themselves, with others and with the law. They grew up in disrupted relational environments, but this family context is not necessarily identified as such by them, by their loved ones or by the professionals of the different institutions (schools, etc.) they attended.