For the first time, the Safer system is present at the Europavox festival. Its objective: to fight against harassment.
When entering, it is the first barnum on the left. Also site home. Safer volunteers welcome and provide information, but above all, they travel throughout the festival. You can’t miss them with their white pinafores.
At the heart of the system is an application. “If festival-goers witness or are victims of sexist or sexual violence, or even any form of violence, they can report it on the app. From there, they are geolocated via their phone and a Safer patrol team intervenes quickly,” explains Lucas. Volunteers are trained in this type of intervention. There is no question of escalating violence, of course. Dialogue comes first.
If the person is drunk, we try to distract them, which is pretty easy. If the person is very drunk, we call security to get them out, otherwise we stay and chat until the alcohol goes down.
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“If the person who has been attacked feels bad, they can come to the stand, debrief with the mediator and then leave feeling more peaceful.”
On the first day, the volunteers intervened “two or three times, for people who were drunk”. There are ten of them to manage the system. A manager, a mediator (Lucas that day) and eight patrol officers.
Obviously, everyone is responsible in these situations. We’ll give you the little tip that the Clermont association My Girl Street gave us: just pretend to know the victim and approach her as if you were happy to see her again. The harasser moves away on his own.
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There are several types of aggression. “Insult, where there are simply insults. Then, there is the stage a little higher, harassment where the person is repeatedly subjected to innuendo, bad jokes, etc. The guts still above- above, sexual assault, so with touching. Still above, there is rape.”
Simon Antony
