All the stories of beaten children, sharing their memories once they become adults, are precious. The transcription of their representations then is invaluable for professionals who support their peers today.
Jonathan Moncassin still remembers a scene today : that of Henry, his current father-in-law, adjusting a television broadcasting an episode of “Little House on the Prairie”. If there is, however, a scenario that is the polar opposite of his family experience, it is this syrupy, cutesy and simpering American series. His daily life was violence, humiliation and insecurity.
Expecting gestures of affection, as any child desires, he received only rejection and hostility, accompanied by slaps or kicks. All, according to the drunken anger of a man beating him as much as he did his sister. Let us add an inconstant and unstable mother, initiator of the corporal punishments inflicted and endowed with the gift of finding herself with tortured men. The picture of a sacrificed childhood is already loaded.
However, these descriptions are not there to pity the reader.. They serve as a background allowing us to decode the mechanisms of resilience which translated for the author into early empowerment. Is it the result of the vital emergency which was necessary to save oneself or the product of a temperament marked by a saving reactivity? Never mind ! It will manifest itself through this solidarity of siblings protecting themselves, as best they can, in the face of a chaotic universe making them experience the worst that could happen.
Being the man of the family was the mission that was then imposed on him! He was forced to chop wood, rock his brothers, change their diapers, tidy the house, clean, vacuum, while there was no money for food, for heating, for clothes, for sporting or cultural activities… An everyday ordeal that was interrupted by placement in a rehabilitation institute. Jonathan Moncassin still remembers the noise made by his mother's stiletto heels walking away when she abandoned him in this establishment.
-Paradoxically, however, despite being abysmal, the change was saving. Life in this educational home would break with the agitation, arbitrariness and deprivations experienced at the family home. The child found calm, attention to himself and leisure activities… all things that were unknown to him until then. The years passed. The family situation became increasingly difficult. The author managed to find the strength to get through it by articulating a personal power forged in misfortune and meetings with resource people to whom he pays tribute today.
When he finally left his educational home, it was not to return to his family for long. Very quickly, he was kicked out. He then began a journey that was all the more improbable as he described himself as almost illiterate. With his driving license and lifeguard swimmer's certificate in hand, he took a skills assessment which guided him towards the profession… of an educator! He provided some replacements in social children's homes and in specialized foster homes. Building on this experience, he obtained his diploma as an educator specializing in validation of acquired experience. By incredible coincidence, he was recruited in May 2013, in the home where he had grown up as a foster child!
“The history of a family can prevent, hurt, even destroy a life,” he says (p.109).. But it is also possible to free ourselves from these invisible chains, he adds. He is living proof. It remains to elucidate an eternal enigma: why did he succeed, when so many other children who have experienced the same ordeals fail to succeed in their lives?
- “The sound of stiletto heels – Journey of a foster child” Jonathan Moncassin with Latëitia Delhon, Ed. EHESP, 2023, 130 p. The sound of stiletto heels
