“I was 14 and I let it go (…). I was 14, I knew it and didn’t say anything.”
“My stepfather came into my brother’s room. I could hear his footsteps in the hall and I knew he was joining him. In that silence, I imagined things. That he was asking my brother to stroke him, maybe to suck him it.
“I was waiting. I was waiting for him to leave the room, full of unknown smells and immediately scorned,” wrote the book’s author, 45-year-old lawyer Camille Kouchner. “By not saying what was going on, I participated in incest.”
More than a month after its publication, Kouchner’s book, “La familia grande”, continues to shake France.
In it, Kouchner accuses his stepfather, French intellectual Olivier Duhamel, of abusing his twin since he was 14 years old.
The twins are the children of former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
Her stepfather, Duhamel, is a former socialist member of the European Parliament and a renowned political analyst who also headed the board of directors of Sciences Po, one of France’s leading universities.
“Being subject to personal attacks and in an attempt to preserve the institutions in which I work, I quit my job,” wrote Duhamel on Twitter on January 4, shortly after the charges arose. The tweet coincided with his departure from the board of Sciences Po, as well as his departure from roles in an intellectual club and in a political science publication.
Since then, Duhamel has deleted the tweet and his Twitter account.
On January 5, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that it was opening an investigation into Duhamel for “rape and sexual assault committed by a person with authority over a child under 15”, even though the statute of limitations has expired.
CNN contacted Duhamel’s lawyer for comment, but received no response. The political scientist has not spoken publicly since his resignation.
Duhamel’s stepson – Kouchner de Camille’s twin brother – also filed a complaint against Duhamel last month, according to a statement by his lawyer Jacqueline Laffont obtained by CNN and initially sent to the AFP news agency.
“In the context of the ‘Duhamel case’, the alleged victim informed AFP, through his lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont, that he had filed a complaint against his former stepfather, Mr Olivier Duhamel, after opening a preliminary investigation by the Paris Public Ministry “, said the statement.
Best shaken university
The repercussions of the Duhamel case are being felt far beyond his family circle.
Sciences Po director Frederic Mion resigned on Tuesday in a letter to teachers and students published on the university’s website.
The university is one of France’s elite schools, having trained five French prime ministers and five presidents, including current leader Emmanuel Macron.
Last month, Mion was under pressure to resign student groups after acknowledging that he was informed of the allegations against Duhamel as early as 2018.
In his resignation letter, Mion referred to a report by the Ministry of Education on the handling of the case, admitting that he made “an error of judgment in dealing with the allegations that were communicated to me in 2018, as well as inconsistencies in the way I expressed myself in this case after it broke. “
In a statement released on January 7, Mion reacted to an article published in the newspaper Le Monde the day before, claiming he knew of the charges, despite initially denying them.
“Without any tangible evidence or any additional or precise knowledge of the situation, I had a hard time believing that the rumors could be founded,” Mion wrote in the statement. He said that finding out in the media the extent of Duhamel’s alleged actions was “a shock to me personally”.
But on Wednesday, in an email to CNN, former Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti – who was once a colleague of Mion at Sciences Po – said Mion called her when the Duhamel revelations surfaced a month ago and supposedly told her: don’t let anyone think we knew. “
CNN contacted Mion, but received no response.
Mion is just one of many members of the French elite to be hit by the Duhamel scandal.
Jean Veil, a prominent lawyer and an old friend of Duhamel’s, admitted to the newspaper Le Monde that he had been aware of incest for “at least 10 years”, invoking “professional secrecy” to explain his silence.
Camille Kouchner denounced what she sees as the silence of French intellectuality in her book.
“Very quickly, the microcosm of the people in power, Saint-Germain-des-Prés [a fancy neighborhood on the Left Bank that has long been associated with the French intellectual elite] Has been informed. Many people knew, and most pretended that nothing had happened, “she wrote.
Victims advance
In addition to the elite of the country where it originated, the Duhamel scandal led to a national reckoning on incest in France, with hundreds of alleged victims appearing on social media under the hashtag #MetooInceste. The French accessed Twitter to share harrowing stories of childhood abuse at the hands of parents and family and how that trauma – and the sense of shame and isolation that accompanies it – often persisted into adulthood.
Feminist thinker and activist Caroline De Haas, who was one of the initiators of #MeTooIncest, told CNN: “We wanted to show that incest was a political and collective issue.”
She explained that the #MeTooIncest movement came from a desire to change the individual story of the Kouchner twins to a collective story of incest.
French lawyers also saw an increase in the number of victims who came forward to share their stories. Child protection lawyer Marie Grimaud told France Inter radio on Tuesday that “for three weeks we received many calls from women who realized the need to speak up, find a lawyer and file a complaint”. In addition to the victims themselves, Grimaud said his office was contacted by people “on behalf of a brother, sister or niece” who they believe “are in danger”.
Facing Incest has long advocated changing legislation to better protect minors against sexual abuse within the family. With the Duhamel scandal making headlines in the French media for more than a month, the government took over.
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti told public broadcaster France 2 on Tuesday that the government planned to classify any penetrating sexual intercourse with a child under 15 as rape.
Currently, for a sexual relationship with children under 15 to be treated as a serious crime – instead of a minor offense with a lighter penalty – it is necessary to prove coercion, violence, threat or surprise.
“The issue of the victim’s consent will no longer be raised. We will not question whether the victim was consenting or not,” Minister of Children and Family Adrien Taquet told Europe 1 on Tuesday.
In France, incest is legally defined as sexual intercourse between two people who are related to a degree to which marriage is prohibited. In addition to direct family ties, the ban also includes relatives by marriage – so divorcees cannot marry a son or father of their ex-spouse, for example. The civil code does not prohibit marriage between cousins.
In addition, incest is not illegal, as long as the relationship is freely consensual between people over the age of 15, the age of sexual consent in the country. Although rape is prohibited, regardless of who the perpetrator is, sexual crimes committed by a family member or “anyone with authority over the victim” face a heavier sentence.
Facing Incest said in his Twitter account that the government’s proposals on the age of consent were “elusive” and expressed the hope that parliamentarians will bring more clarity when working on the project.
De Haas told CNN that current debates over the bill “bother” her due to a focus on repressive legislation. “What is missing is a public policy for training and prevention,” he said.
Reflecting on the wider impact of the Duhamel scandal on French society, De Haas said the case brought incest to the forefront of public debate and made it a high profile political issue.
“This is thanks to the legacy of #MeToo,” she said, noting that the movement brought the perception that sexual violence was not isolated acts, but a social and political phenomenon.
Barbara Wojazer and Antonella Francini in Paris and Niamh Kennedy in Dublin contributed to this story.