Attacking someone close to you to hit your victim right in the heart. This is how we could quickly characterize the term “vicarious violence”. This form of manipulation occurs particularly in cases of domestic violence. Sometimes to the point of death. The phenomenon, conceptualized by psychologist Sonia Vaccaro after tragedies that marked Spain, is not a distant abstraction. In France too, vicarious violence must question us.
When the child becomes a weapon to touch his ex
Vicarious violence generally develops after a separation. The attacker, often an ex-spouse, seeks not only to punish the mother, but to destroy her emotionally by using a third party (child, animal, loved ones, symbolic objects, etc.) as a vector of pain. Threats, exploitation of children, refusal of care, multiplication of legal procedures: the modes of action are varied, and often invisible to the eyes of a system which tends to treat each fact in isolation.
However, these acts are not anecdotal. In the most extreme forms, the attacker falls into the irreversible. The French example of Courbevoie, in May 2023, remains chilling: little Chloé, 5 years old, stabbed in the family apartment a few days after a protection order had withdrawn parental authority from the father? “Since I can’t have it anymore, you’ll never have it again either.” the father wrote before ending his life. Gesture that his lawyer will describe as “very paroxysm of vicarious violence”. The goal is to ensure that this mother will never recover.
“Thoughtful or impulsive?” : the view of the psychiatrist
To shed light on the psychological mechanisms, we collected the words of Dr Joachim Müllner, psychiatrist. His observations distinguish the variety of individual trajectories and the social roots of these violent acts.
“Is this type of violence deliberate or impulsive? It can be both. When it comes to touching a former companion, a period of rumination seems possible before taking the act. But it can also be an impulsive act. By hitting someone’s pet to make it react, for example.”
But beyond the moment of action, it is the mechanism itself that causes alarm. “It is a mechanism that can be described as perverse, even if that is not the term in psychiatry. It goes with personality traits of the sociopathic type or so-called antisocial personality.” If some people seem to find pleasure in making others suffer, this is not the case for everyone, believes the expert.
“But the perverse mechanism comes from appeasing oneself, from alleviating one’s suffering by harming another.” By inflicting pain and humiliation on the other, the aggressor seeks to calm his own anxiety of loss, to regain control through destruction.
At the intersection of control, influence and patriarchal culture
For Joachim Müllner, the act is also part of a social logic: “This also seems to appear in the context of the culture of domestic violence in general. (…) a structuring of relations of domination around the power of the man, the absence of women’s rights to autonomy.”
In other words, vicarious violence would be linked to patriarchal culture: the loss of control felt when a woman leaves the relationship can trigger coercive strategies aimed at isolating, denigrating, harassing, until the destruction of what remains within reach.
“These actions seem to say ‘I prefer to make you suffer to try to ease my suffering. I can’t find relief in a mature and individual way.” They necessarily need to externalize their suffering to the actions of others.”
The psychiatrist finally recalls that, if perverse mechanisms exist in all genders, the statistical reality of feminicides and domestic violence refers mainly to male perpetrators. “Is it specific to men? In theory no. But there is a clear representation among men, that is very clear. That is why these are feminicides by men and not by women.”
Name to better prevent and protect
Legally recognizing vicarious violence, as proposed by Spain, has practical significance: it would make it possible to understand these facts in their logic, to protect victims, mothers and children, and to direct judicial and social responses towards appropriate measures. To name is to make visible a logic of domination which, otherwise, dissolves into series of separate facts: threats, endangering children, harassment, defamation…
Vicarious violence is, by nature, violence that hides behind the bond. By giving it a name and hearing from experts, lawyers and families, society could begin to deploy the remedies: reinforced legal protection, training of professionals, help for mothers and children, and psychological work targeted at potential perpetrators.
Because, as the psychiatrist summarizes: it is less a question of explaining than of preventing. To spot the signals, to intervene before the control strategy becomes irreparable.