She calls him “the other“, or “the ugly father“From the age of 8 to 13, Karine Van Cayzeele was sexually abused by her stepfather. A charismatic engineer. “arrived like a messiah“, who was able to seduce her working-class mother in Dunkirk, where she ran a used car garage.
Stunned, paralyzed, little Karine was unable to talk about it to her mother, who suspected nothing and was absent from the house every time “the other” committed the unthinkable. And then there was this day when the young girl found the incredible courage to face her attacker, alone, at the age of 13, firmly asking him: “Why are you doing this?“He then has this terrible response, in a nonchalant and disdainful tone:”Because you do poorly at school.“
A mark of extreme perversion and a typical manipulation of the control methods used by pedophiles, which will create a lot of confusion and guilt in the mind of the young girl, especially since her dyslexia already means she is stigmatized at school. Nevertheless, the confrontation puts an end to the torture. Not to the burden. For five years, Karine avoided him, hating him in silence. And then at 18, despite the blackmail (“If you talk, I'll blow my body“), she reveals everything, to a friend… then to her mother.
15 years of psychoanalysis
“It was torture telling him the truth. It's the hardest thing I've done – the hardest confession of my entire life – everything else after that is pipesshe confides today, almost 60 years old, in a surprisingly calm tone. I was injured once. I hurt her several times, for her child, for herself as a woman, and as a mother who saw nothing…“
In her immense misfortune, Karine is still lucky enough to be believed. Immediately, his mother cuts ties, no longer lets him come and leaves a handrail with her at the police station. “He fled to Iran… and married a girl my age there!“, denounces Karine Van Cayzeele. The road to reconstruction was only just beginning.
