Laure Martin writes and speaks “for all victims” of sexual violence, whether incestuous or not. Like many of them, it took a long time, a lot of time to be able to do it, in the form of an autobiographical book, “my bare feet strike the soil” (1), in which it tells the inexpressible (Incest by his grandfather, then a rape) with raw words but from which nevertheless emerges a certain, impactful poetry.
“I practiced Slam a lot, in Paris, twenty years ago and I kept the very direct style in writing. It is a format that suits me, less intellectual, less elitist than others, “explains the one who writes” has always “, self -fiction, militant texts, on violence against women. It will have taken him 30 years to be able to sleep on paper this “account of emancipation”, the main subject of which is not incest in itself, but “how sexual violence places you in an object status” For years, decades, sometimes a lifetime.
“Not an isolated case”
“I would like to be a boy. I would like to be clogged, that my hole is blocked with plaster, ”writes the child Laure who will find his salvation in the remoteness of a toxic family, as physically violent as psychologically.
As a child placed at 15, suicidal teenager, she will become an adult curious about everything (she has worked in NGOs and dispens today for business training council). “I have traveled a lot and made many meetings, which allowed me to gradually understand that I was not an isolated case,” explains the one who discovered the dark shutter of her own story only recently . When its traumatic amnesia gradually risen.
My first hypothesis was that I was getting crazy
As a teenager, she suffered severe anxiety attacks with convulsions. Then at 25, she had “the impression of being the perfect liberated woman”, mistress of her body … for a time. “In 2018 I started to have flashes, images accompanied by smells and bodily sensations. There is a cognitive before sensory. My first hypothesis was that I became crazy… ”
The horror of the denial of relatives
In 2019, the family (Laure Martin today has three boys, including twins) settled in Artiguelouve, near Pau, along the Gave. Quiet.
“At the police station, the policeman says that one cannot file a complaint against a dead man. »»
-
“I was pregnant with our third child, and here something was dismissed. Therapies but especially time has had their effect. Finally. Too late ? The inceur papi has been dead for seven years already.
“At the police station, the policeman says that one cannot file a complaint against a dead man and gives me the flyer of an association to be listened to,” writes Laure Martin. I don't want to talk. […] I want to make my childhood and the life that goes with me. Incest rewrites everything. He was missing whole sections of my childhood film. I was told that I was a victim, but no one told me that I was not for nothing, ”she wrote yet.
His book, much more than more testimony on social wandering, medical wandering, the horror of the denial of relatives, is also a universal message that the mother, now 42 years old, carries : “We are millions to experience this, incest and sexual violence affects all the strata of society (Editor's note: Laure Martin comes from an easy environment). We know everywhere. »»
Yet the “liberation of speech”, as important as it is, is insufficient in her eyes. “Everyone wants to eradicate sexual violence. There are many words, but also few means when they represent a staggering cost for the state! For victims health, mental health, for the authors justice, prison … “
Justice restaurative
In addition to the care and protection of victims on which France still has a substantial delay on its Spanish neighbor, for example, certain tracks such as circles of speech between aggressors or repair circles (restorative justice) are still too little explored. And beyond the question of sexual violence in themselves, the idea of male domination is always anchored in mentalities.
“Putting words that release is one thing, allowing a collective awareness is another …” Laure Martin brings her ecot there, by her book of course but also, she hopes, via the meetings she hears Well multiply. “If it allows two children to get better, a child to be protected, it will be won. »»
(1) “My bare feet strike the ground”, ed. Double punctuation, 18 euros. Laure Martin will be February 7 at 6.30 p.m. at the Escapade in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, February 15 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Cultura de Lescar (Libre district) or even February 19 at 7 p.m. Plume in Pau.
