Migrant women, sex workers… “Libération” investigated these women overexposed to violence, who prefer to suffer in silence rather than access justice.
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They are the invisible ones, the hindered ones. Migrant women and sex workers who are victims of sexual violence and wish to file a complaint are exposed to a «double violence», alerted the NGO Amnesty International in a report in September. If more than one in two women victims of violence report having suffered a refusal to file a complaint or having been discouraged from following through with their approach, according to a survey by the feminist collective #NousToutes of 2021, these obstacles multiply when victims accumulate several factors of discrimination.
Liberation investigated these victims at the center of all suspicion, whose words are denied and for whom the legislative protection measures are insufficient, if not non-existent. Worse still, for those who are in an irregular situation, pushing the door of a police station or a gendarmerie can even expose them to risks: that of being placed in a detention center or even expelled from the country. According to Cimade, seventeen people victims of violence have been placed in detention centers after calling the police or gendarmerie for help since January 2023.
These women, the least protected, are nevertheless the most exposed to violence. A study published in 2023 in The Lancet with the Public Assistance of Marseille hospitals shows that more than a quarter of asylum seekers in France were victims of sexual violence in the year following their arrival in the territory. 75% were before their entry into France. Miprof (Interministerial Mission for the protection of women against violence and the fight against human trafficking) measured in 2015 that “38% of prostitutes have suffered rape during their life. This rate is 6.8% for women in the general population. Associations, lawyers and victims denounce this double punishment.
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