Femicide in Montpellier: “Our vision of old age prevents the politicization of violence against the elderly”

On Tuesday 20 February, a 66-year-old woman, Marie-Pierre J., was executed point-blank by her ex-husband, 72, before the latter committed suicide. The events occurred in the heart of Montpellier, in front of the court where the two had met. before the family court judge for the purposes of liquidating their property interests following the divorce delivered in 2016 “, made it known to the press Fabrice Belargent, prosecutor of Montpellier.

A feminicide that exposes a reality that is too often invisible: that of domestic violence among the elderly. Spotlight on Margot Giacinti, specialist in feminicides, doctor in political science, at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon and at the Triangle laboratory.

To miss. There are few studies on femicide against older women. However, according to the latest data from the Ministry of the Interior, dating back to 2019, almost one in five victims is over 70 years old. How can we explain this invisibility?

Margot Giacinti. If we take into consideration women close to retirement, we even get to one victim in four, or even one in three depending on the year!

The lack of study is partly related to how we view older adults in our current society. Older people, and especially women, are invisible in public spaces. The question of old age arouses research interest through the prism of health. But, as soon as you reach the intimate sphere, you encounter an abysmal void. One reason is that we tend to think that older people no longer have much of the intimate life, the married life. They have been married for a long time, so there must be no problems or violence… By looking at these elderly people, and in particular at women, we avoid the possibility of politicizing the violence of which they are victims.

Another element of explanation is the consideration that the elderly do not contribute as much to society as “active” people. This difference that we foster, between someone who would be active in society and someone who would move to a passive status, plays, in my opinion, a role in the feminicides themselves. We note that the men who kill throughout French society, regardless of age, are often people without professional activity. And the hypothesis I formulate in my research is that the loss of status – therefore the transition from an active man with a career to that of a passive man in retirement – can accentuate a sort of disgust towards life and therefore exacerbate both violence towards of the partner and behind it there is the desire to commit suicide, as is particularly true for femicide in this age group.

Health is an argument often used when talking about femicide among the elderly. We sometimes talk about “altruistic suicide,” even if that means downplaying the violence of the act. What does this imply?

MG. Once again, the politicization of violence by older men did not work in the same way as for younger women. There is a lack of work on the reasons that lead older men to kill older women. In some cases, doubt remains, because people were so ill that it is said that they wanted to escape a terrible or lonely end of life, so they decided to kill themselves. It’s something relatively minor, but it shouldn’t be ruled out. Because it involves working on another very political topic: the question of the end of life.

Sometimes we also listen to caregivers’ arguments. In some medical records we see it clearly written that these men could no longer bear it, they could no longer bear having to take care of their partner. That this worry overwhelmed them so much that they preferred to kill themselves after killing, deciding that the whole couple should put an end to it all. Keep in mind that the opposite situation is very rare. Statistics show that very few older women kill their husbands. And whoever helps, does so until the end.

Read also: Laurène Daycard: “Our society is tired of the fascination it exerts on executioners”

In the case of the femicide of Marie-Pierre J., the perpetrator was not known to the police and was not the subject of any complaint for violence. Is this a recurring pattern in these cases?

MG. Women in their 60s, 70s, 80s were socialized into a different era. They may not have had the opportunity, like today’s younger generations, to have such a strong voice on the dimension of violence. We must ask ourselves the reasons for the failure to declare this violence.

They may be among those women for whom being a victim of violence was once synonymous with shame and stigmatization. We really need to read these absences of reporting in relation to the age of the victims. They certainly called for justice less because they were less encouraged to do so, because they kept these acts of violence to themselves. In the vast majority of cases it involved violence. It is not because there were no complaints that there was no violence.

Are we observing a process of increasing romanticization of femicide among the elderly?

MG. One thing is certain, we are dealing with people who appear more vulnerable and we have a tendency to look at them with a little more empathy due to their age. We will reduce the degree of violence, while we will be able to have patriarchal tyrants, even at 70 years old.

When femicide is followed by suicide, one can in fact notice a process of romanticisation (on the idea of ​​dying together, ed.)

But above all there is a tendency to deny the fact that older women have a will of their own, a capacity to act. When they decided to leave their husbands, at 60, 70, 80, their decision was vilified. It doesn’t have the same meaning as it does to a 20, 30 or 40 year old woman. For the latter, we will have as analysis “she wanted to leave, he wanted to keep her”. For an elderly woman the analyzes are different and say a lot about our vision of old age: “well yes, but they are still better together than alone”. We tell ourselves that staying is a way to avoid growing old alone, isolated. However, if these women decide to break up, sometimes after 40 years of marriage, it is perhaps because the politicization of violence has finally led them to become aware of what they were suffering (and perhaps also that the #MeToo wave has something to do with do with It!).

Marie-Pierre J. and her executioner were officially divorced as of 2016. How is this indicative of a structural pattern?

MG. Sometimes, for cases involving the elderly, we find ourselves faced with cases that are much more difficult to analyse, where there is a lot of work to be done to document the path of violence and reconstruct what happened, questioning the brothers and sisters who are still alive, children, etc. In the case of Marie-Pierre J. the intention was clear. We see a woman who has divorced her, who finds herself in court and that’s when her ex-husband kills her. Let’s find a structuring script.

NousAll, which is doing an amazing job, he said “Feminism is about ownership.” I would like to clarify this idea of ​​possession, because I find that talking about possession says a lot on a psychological level about the perpetrators and little about what the victims wanted to do. In my thesis I developed an analysis that allows us to define femicide as an act that involves from sanction to attempt at female emancipation. In the case of Marie-Pierre J., which seems important to me, is to underline that this woman knew what she wanted. She wanted to leave, she was divorced, etc. And in the end she comes to punish her for wanting to emancipate herself too much, living her life without him.

This is essential, because here we really have a knot, common to many feminicides. Women who want to divorce, women who want to separate, women who want to report violence, etc. We’re really trying to get these women out of difficult situations. With, in front of them, men who refuse to let them go, regardless of age. By placing ourselves on this side, I think we give a more faithful account of the victims’ experiences.

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