Isabelle Roma: ambitious goals, but even more violence against women in 2022

According to the We All association, 200,000 women are declared victims of domestic violence a year, 80% of rape complaints are filed. 85% of femicide victims in 2019 had alerted the police. Instead observers and associations still denounce a lack of resourcesthe Minister for Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Isabelle Rome returns for Lose on the measures put in place to combat violence against women : specialized justice, training of police officers and gendarmes, prevention of recidivism… Interview.

Eliminating violence against women: an interview with Isabelle Rome

To miss. November 25 is marked by the international day for the elimination of violence against women, but it is also the 3-year anniversary of the end of the Grenelle of domestic violence. Where are we really today in the fight against violence against women?

Isabella Rome. I think there is objective progress in terms of protection tools, personnel training, agents, all actors at all levels. In terms of training, for example, 160,000 police officers and gendarmes have been trained. Still with regard to the forces of order, there is also a presence of social workers in the police headquarters and gendarmerie. There were around 150 before Grenelle, today there are 415, and there will be 600 by 2025. This is extremely important because they allow for better support and reception of the victims. We know that this is one of the criticisms that is often leveled, that of the reception in the police stations. This helps fix it. Gérald Darmanin took an instruction to generalize specific pathways for victims of sexual violence in police stations and gendarmerie. There are also protection tools: “Serious danger” telephones, there were 300 at the beginning of 2019, today we have between 3,500 and 3,700, that is ten times more. There is also the installation of the anti-reconciliation bracelet. As of 2020, all jurisdictions have one and nearly 1,000 are active. We also multiplied the number of emergency accommodation places as more than 80% of emergency accommodation places have been created since 2017. I was with Olivier Klein [ministre délégué chargé de la Ville et du Logement, ndlr] a few days ago. He said that we have reached 10,000 seats and that we will have 11,000 by the end of 2023. There is also a theme that emerged a lot, politically and in the media, during the Grenelle, that of the need to support the perpetrators to better prevent recidivism.

I will never stop reminding you, since I was a magistrate, I know what I’m talking about: if we don’t prevent recidivism, we don’t effectively protect the victims.

If we don’t address this violence, which can be inherent in some people, no matter how much we leave a person five years in prison, when he gets out, he will start again what he did before with the others. And for this we opened these 30 treatment centers for the guilty which I brought together a few weeks ago to have an initial assessment: 12,000 people have been welcomed since their opening. This can be for quite specific things, for example, for accountability courses, but it can also be for a follow-up or even, later, an orientation on more important and heavier follow-ups.

What are your levers of action to continue reducing violence?

There are several leads, two of which are hopefully short term. They are two actions that I proposed to the Prime Minister and which he announced in September. It is, for example, apply to a specialized courtwith the announcement of the doubling of specialized detectives, which means more police, specialized gendarmes. There is also this mission entrusted to two parliamentarians to take stock of the judicial treatment of this violence and formulate recommendations for a more reactive, more efficient, more innovative, more specialized justice while preserving specificity.

We will not significantly reduce violence against women if we do not intervene upstream in terms of prevention.

Isabella Rome

Are we talking about courts specialized in the treatment of gender-based and sexual violence, as we see in Spain?

We say “specialized” justice because they are not necessarily courts, they can be stakes. The mission itself can help to see how all this can be articulated. Because there is still the problem of being able to have both specificity, but also proximity. We see that it is more difficult to do this in a small court than in a large court.

There is also the “New Start” package, in support of victims, precisely with a series of measures that can be activated for them, to support them socially when they decide to leave: an allowance to help with childcare, integration, training, psychological support and emergency accommodation if needed. We will pilot the system in five or six territories in early 2020.

To go beyond the aspect of justice itself and address the cultural side of sexist and sexual violence, what can be done to initiate a global cultural change with respect to this violence in France?

Exactly, it’s a third track. We will not significantly reduce violence against women if we do not intervene upstream in terms of prevention. It’s about everything, really. With Pap N’Diaye [ministre de l’Éducation Nationale, ndlr], we made a video about sex education. You took the matter head-on by asking the rectors to enforce the 2001 law. In one minute there really are all the messages to read. Because sex education above all. When we say it, it is in a broad sense, it is the culture of equality, it is the culture of respect for others, it is learning what consent is. So that, I think, is very important. Furthermore, this is all we can do in terms of education in sexual and emotional life outside of school, even if school is still the backbone, it is what we can do with recreation centres, what we can also do with the SNU. We will work on it.