for Inès Chatin, ten years of sexual violence and decades of silence – Libération

Sexual abuse, rape, child pornography photos… Thirty-five years after a traumatic childhood, Inès Chatin filed a complaint with the Juveniles’ Office, an investigation which has been running for eight months already. She denounces the violence inflicted on her by a group of very influential men close to her adoptive father, Jean-François Lemaire.

At Inès Chatin, most of the emotions are buried. Remaining impassive, not letting anyone guess at the pain she endured, is precisely what her attackers asked of her when they raped her with objects. Suffering in silence is also what she tried to do to protect her mother, Lucienne. Because behind closed doors at home, a perverse pattern has long been going on: to fuel the guilt of her two children – Inès Chatin has an older brother, also adopted – and to enslave them, their adoptive father, the doctor Jean-François Lemaire, he attacked his wife. “If we asked a question, it was mom who answered,” still having nightmares about Inès Chatin. She remains haunted by the evening when Lemaire threw her down the grand staircase of their home, located at 97, rue du Bac.

Immured in this mechanism, she was only able to question her origins and verbalize her past after the death of Lucienne, in May 2021: “Mom had to die for her to finally be safe. Without that, I would surely have kept silent.” she whispers. To this, it must be added that having been the direct victim of her adoptive father’s most intimate friends, whom she continued to be around as an adult – some of them were invited to her wedding in 1997 – she is remained psychologically subjugated.

Nearly thirty-five years later, Inès Chatin has difficulty agreeing to describe the rawest scenes from her childhood. Release was able to experience it during the sixty hours of real interview