“The day I was sexually assaulted, I understood that it was too much,” says Nathan Smadja

Nathan Smadja est fondateur de Résiste, une association dédiée à la lutte contre le harcèlement scolaire  et le cyberharcèlement. Une activité qu’il exerce en parallèle de travail de collaborateur parlementaire auprès de la députée Horizons Naïma Moutchou. Nous l’avons interviewé à l’occasion de la journée du harcèlement scolaire, qui a lieu ce jeudi 7 novembre 2024. 

LE FIGARO ÉTUDIANT. – Vous avez vous-même été victime de harcèlement  au cours de votre scolarité . Pouvez-vous nous raconter ?

Nathan SMADJA. – Tout a commencé en sixième, lorsque je suis arrivé dans un nouveau collège, dans le public, à Paris. Dès les premières semaines, j’ai été victime d’insultes homophobes. Juste parce que je chantais, je dansais, j’aimais la comédie musicale, on m’a assigné une orientation sexuelle. J’avais seulement onze ans. J’étais trop jeune pour penser à tout cela. Je ne savais même pas ce que voulait dire «pédé». Puis les choses ont dérivé vers des insultes antisémites parce que je ne mangeais pas de porc à la cantine. Mes harceleurs sont même allés jusqu’à me suivre en bas de chez moi. Ils m’ont plaqué contre un mur et m’ont frappé. À la fin, j’ai été agressé sexuellement à la piscine. Mes harceleurs disaient vouloir vérifier si j’étais bien circoncis.

Beaucoup de victimes ont du mal à parler de ce qu’ils subissent. Comment êtes-vous parvenu à sortir du silence ?

Toutes les semaines je demandais à mon père de me racheter une équerre et un compas, parce qu’on me les cassait. Il a fini par comprendre que quelque chose n’allait pas. D’abord je suis resté évasif et distant car je n’étais pas prêt à parler. Le jour où j’ai été agressé sexuellement, en rentrant chez moi le soir, j’ai compris que c’était trop. Je ne comprenais pas ce que je vivais. Mais je savais que ce n’était pas normal. Je n’ai pas raconté l’épisode à mon père, mais je lui ai demandé d’aller déposer plainte. Sur le moment, j’ai pensé que tout cela serait terminé. Que cette plainte signerait la fin de six mois de calvaire.

Many harassed students are not defended by their establishment. Is this why your ordeal continued?

Yes. My father and I went to see the CPE with the complaint. She told us she didn't know. However, I had reported the facts to several teachers and managers of the establishment. My five harassers were summoned to the police station. For the next few months, he had to deal with being the person who had filed the complaint. The management of my establishment even threatened to file a complaint for defamation, because I accused them of doing nothing. Despite the complaint, I still got hit by these same people. One day, one of them punched me in the eye and broke my glasses. I went to see the school nurse who said to me and I will remember it for the rest of my life: “What have you done again?”

How did this story end? Has the harassment you were experiencing finally stopped?

It ended in the family car, on the highway, returning from Marseille at the end of the summer vacation. I perfectly remember breaking down and telling my father that I could no longer set foot in this school, that I wanted to change establishments. So I joined a private college outside of a contract for my return to fifth grade.

In recent years, the Ministers of National Education, notably Jean-Michel Blanquer and Gabriel Attal, have made school bullying one of their priorities. In reality, do you consider that things have evolved in the right direction?

In 2023, the suicides of Lucas, Lindsay and Nicolas have raised public awareness about what is really happening in our schools. But in reality, chronic ministerial instability prevents us from thinking about a long-term policy. What about the measures launched last year? For what budget? I was personally able to question ministers from previous governments who were unable to answer me. Furthermore, what I hear in the establishments where I travel is not reassuring. Here, a teacher who tells me that she is doing what she can, but that the school is sick and that we will not get through it. There, a principal who tells me that the school is becoming the daycare of the republic. In reality, a lot depends on the head of the establishment. But I remain optimistic!

In your opinion, what should be done concretely to further improve the situation?

With the Résiste association, we are proposing some fairly simple measures. First, the creation of a dedicated interministerial delegation to monitor the implementation of the measures launched a year ago. Furthermore, we are demanding a complete overhaul of school medicine, which must come under the direction of the Ministry of Health and no longer National Education. This is good, Michel Barnier wants to make the mental health of young people a national cause! I am also campaigning for the establishment of compulsory psychological monitoring for harassing and harassed students.

I also hope that the breaker pays principle will really be put in place. Theoretically, it is the harassing student who must now change establishment, and not the harassed student. What is it really? We don't have any figures. Finally, we must make parents responsible who too often do not understand that it could be something other than the bickering of schoolchildren.

In your opinion, parents do not sufficiently understand the issue and their responsibility for their child's behavior?

When I speak with parents as part of our awareness-raising activities, some tell me that they were unaware that, in the eyes of the law, they assumed criminal responsibility for the actions of their children. When I talk to them about the sanctions that a harasser risks, my jaws drop. Personally, I am not closed to the idea of ​​hitting the parents of bullying children in the wallet. I have no firm opinion on the modalities of such a measure, but it is possible. We are studying several avenues, such as administrative fines for example.

How did you decide to found Résiste, your association dedicated to the fight against school bullying?

In 2015, after experiencing this violence, I told my father I wanted to do something, that I wanted to act. I felt the need and even the duty to return what those around me had given me. I was fully aware of having escaped death and I wanted young people who were not lucky enough to have the same surroundings as me to be able to be supported. But I was young, I had no money and I had to take the time to build myself up after the teasing and attacks.

One day, in 2022, I hear someone calling behind my back: “Nathan”. I turn around, it was one of my stalkers. This person apologizes. Suddenly, I see blurry. Everything comes to the surface. I realize that I am not being cared for at all. And then there was Lucas' suicide in January 2023. The harassment that this young schoolboy suffered reminded me of my own story. So I told myself that I never wanted to be silent again. In September 2023, I therefore founded the Résiste association. A sad coincidence of the calendar, the launch coincided with the suicide of young Nicolas, harassed in his establishment in Yvelines. We mainly organize prevention actions, with interventions in schools and awareness campaigns.

Every year in France, a million students are victims of bullying. What do you want to tell them?

That we can get through this. Believe in yourself and continue, tomorrow we will be able to do the job we can, have the friends we want, get out of these dark visions, these horrible suicidal thoughts. To those who witness this violence without being victims, open your eyes, do not be afraid to act and intervene. It might have saved my life ten years ago.