Two recent cases are shaking up what we usually hear about pedophilia affairs. In recent days, a 59 -year -old ATSEM in Hérault, has just been indicted for rape and sexual assault on nine children aged 3 to 4 years. And a young nurse of around twenty years has been accused of sexual assault on infants in a neonatology service in the Paris region.
Two women, two healthcare trades, two figures of trust. And yet … they committed the unthinkable. How to imagine that pedophilia can be combined with feminine? What is the profile of these women? The subject rarely addressed must be looked at. For this, we asked the psychologist Amélie Boukhobza, in order to better understand.
A stiff -related steel, “we don’t want to believe it”
When we talk about pedophilia, the image of a man immediately arises. A male predator, often isolated. A woman? We spontaneously think that it is impossible. “”The collective unconscious rejects this hypothesis. Because it collides with a deeply anchored stereotype: that of the naturally maternal, protective woman, incapable of committing the irreparable. And yet “ estimates our expert.
Result: faced with this type of business, a stronger amazement is revealed, heavier silence. “”Society does not want to see female pedophilia. We suspect less, we excuse faster“Analysis Amélie Boukhobza. However, these cases exist, and they shock all the more since they break our mental patterns.
Complex profiles, often marked by psychic disorganization
Statistically minority, pedophile women do not respond to a “typical profile”. Some act alone, others under influence or in pairs with a main attacker. The Montreuil nurse thus evokes a psychological grip on the part of her companion.
But in other cases, violence comes from a more intimate flaw. These women sometimes have a past marked by violence, abuse, or a chaotic family history. The act is never trivial or easy to decipher. However, our expert tries to enlighten us on the circumstances that can explain it.
“”In some women, the transition to sex on children is part of a context of disorganization or confusion of relational benchmarks. The link to the child is then completely perverted, that is to say that it is no longer a child, but an object of compensation, or fusion for example “ details Amélie Boukhobza. “”They are women who, very early, were not recognized as differentiated subjects for example. Their psychic limits were not made. We were able to treat them as objects, such as parental extensions, or even as ‘little women’ too quickly sexualized“She adds.
Among the most frequent profiles, we find:
- Women under control or subject to the influence of an aggressive partner, in a very pathological couple dynamic;
- Psychically very immature women, whose sexuality has itself remained frozen at an infantile or pre-adolescent stage;
- Women who have experienced non-digested abuses themselves, who have not symbolized their own history and replay, without being aware of it, a scene of total confusion between roles.
“In any case, there is often an impossibility to symbolize the child as a separate subject, or to contain his own impulses“Add the psychologist.”And even less to develop what the active child “. Some are then taken in a fused logic. They have not learned to differentiate the other’s desire from theirs. Nor to place solid internal prohibitions.
“The child then becomes, at the unconscious level, the extension of a vacuum, a lack, a need for love or poorly elaborated power. More possible symbolization: the child is no longer a child. He becomes an object of reparation, excitation, possession … or erasure of ancient pain” still develops the psychologist.
Break the taboo to better protect
If these facts shock as much, it is also because they are surrounded by a collective silence. Society does not want to face this disturbing reality.
“”This taboo is dangerous because it prevents prevention, identification, protection of children“insists Amélie Boukhobza.”We must dare to talk about it“She recalls. Not to shock or stigmatize, but to understand and act.
“”Female pedophilia exists. It is rare, but it is not an absolute exception. And as long as we refuse to consider it, it will remain a blind area of child protection“She concludes.