“Sexuality education at school is necessary, my work as a prosecutor proves it to me every day”

SPEAK – I am a vice-prosecutor in a medium-sized city, more specifically in charge of attacks on people. Among other things, I deal with cases of domestic violence, particularly against minors, and therefore cases of incest and sexual violence. I am appalled by the controversies over education for emotional, relational and sexual life (EVARS) at school.

As a magistrate, I see cases of sexual assault and rape of minors committed by relatives every day. These offenses have no social marker: they exist in all social or professional environments, at all levels of integration into society. Studies estimate that 160,000 children are victims each year, a figure that is probably underestimated.

In most cases, the danger for minors comes from where they live. In these conditions, how can we leave the capacity to educate children about sexuality exclusively to the family?

Offer another place for sexuality education

All public prosecutors deal with incest cases every week. It's perpetually heartbreaking, because the same patterns repeat themselves every time. First, the abuser makes the child believe that what is happening is normal, that a family member who loves another is doing this, that it is proof of love. However, children have no access to the sexual sphere and have no way of understanding what is happening. For them, this creates an abnormal “normal.”

The other spring is secrecy. To impose silence, attackers often repeat to their victims that if they speak out, they will hurt their family, that they will be placed in a shelter, that someone will go to prison… For a child it is terrifying. Facts can be kept quiet for a very long time, as it can be difficult to talk about them.

Of course, in functional families, parents and loved ones have a role to play in sex education. There are plenty of homes in which this is not a taboo, and where parents answer their children's questions at every age. But in cases of incest, how do we help the victims? Refusing to allow schools to participate in education about emotional, relational and sexual life means leaving attackers the possibility of being the only ones to explain how it happens. And it means accepting to leave at least 160,000 victims per year on the side of the road, for whom the family is not a place of security.

Freeing the floor on domestic violence

For me it is very clear that there must be at least one other place, outside of the family, where basic values ​​are taught. We can absolutely explain to a 4 or 5 year old child that her privacy belongs to her, that no one has the right to touch her and that if this happens, it is not normal. Thanks to this speech, we will perhaps be able to create a school where speech can be freed, where secrecy and this abnormal impression of normality put in place by the attackers will be lifted.

However, helping to lift the silence also means helping to ensure that the facts can last less long, that they are denounced more quickly. And when we denounce a sexual attacker, we possibly prevent him from causing other victims. I am not saying that EVARS at school will reduce sexual violence, but rather that it is also a way of participating in tackling this immense social problem that is incest, on which we are very late in terms of support. We owe it to these children.

It's the children who pay

Obviously, school stakeholders must be neutral and trained on the subject. Like all teaching, it must be regulated in its content and in its implementation by National Education. But what I hear is that, for fear of possible “slippages” of the content of these courses, we believe that it is legitimate to never put them in place, and to leave children without anyone to talk to about what is happening at home. This assessment of the balance between risks and benefits seems incomprehensible to me.

Beyond sexual violence, there are many subjects that education in emotional, relational and sexual life can address. It is also a space for prevention regarding pornography, to which children have access earlier and earlier, consent, intimate photos, respect. School builds citizens, and this also applies to their relationship with others, including in the emotional sphere. Let us make this education a political question, in the name of a supposed orientation “anti-wokists”this doesn't make sense to me. And it’s the children who pay for it.

This testimony was collected and edited by Aïda Djoupa. You would like to testify about HuffPost ? Write to us at [email protected]

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