France is not a country for female soldiers: sexual harassment and violence are the rule

This morning The world published a long investigation into the “ordeal” of female officers, who suffer and report sexual violence and harassment from colleagues and superiors, but who often, having reported, are sanctioned, while the alleged attackers retain their functions and continue to pursue their careers with impunity. The newspaper also collected testimonies about the sexual harassment and assault that exist in the most prestigious military school in Francethe one that prepares future officers of the French army, the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr, in Brittany, founded by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, first consul at the time. The school welcomes just over one hundred students every year upon competition. A new Pandora’s box is opening in #MeToo in France, which has already been called #MeTooArmée. In April the Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, had launched an “investigation mission” on alleged violence and sexual assaults within the French army and put into practice “measures of prevention, protection of victims and sanctions for the attackers”. It all started from complaint by Manon Dubois, who joined the Navy at 17 (she’s now 23). Manon accused an electrical engineer of sexually assaulting her on several occasions, in 2019 and then in 2021, during a mission in the port of Brest, when she was just an adult, and then during another mission off the coast of Norway and Scotland. After the repeated attacks, the young woman, a first class petty officer, had the courage to report the violence to her superiors: her attacker had admitted the facts and was suspended for two weeks, while she was “advised” not to participate in any more missions at sea. Manon Dubois decided to leave the Navy: “I no longer wanted to work for an institution that protects the guilty and excludes the victims.” Her case had been taken to heart by Laetitia Saint-Paul, deputy of the Macronist Renaissance party, at 43 years old, she was an Army captain herself, who had reported it to the minister. The flaws in the Thémis cell, created in 2014 precisely to fight against sexual and sexist harassment and all forms of discrimination in the army, were then discovered: it emerged that, in 2023, 700 people had contacted the platform, of which 200 for sexual harassment and violence, but that only about fifty sanctions had been issued. Since then the testimonies have multiplied: in a month Laetitia Saint-Paul received around a hundred reports. In his investigation today, The world tells the case of Corporal Rose (not her real name), 24 years old, who decided to report the rape she suffered by a superior in 2022. On 30 April the hierarchy communicated her decision: Rose “from being a victim has become guilty”. Since it turned out that she had consumed alcohol on the evening of the attack, she was the one who was sanctioned: sent “for fifteen days to a small cell with a bathroom, barriers on the windows and a small courtyard to go out and smoke”. The world tells the case of Flora, captain, 36 years old. She was also sanctioned for reporting a rape: in 2022, during a parachutist training in Pau, an instructor entered her room and abused her. Flora doesn’t know exactly what had happened: “In the evening I had been drinking, but at that moment I was completely unconscious. Did she drug me? In the morning I woke up without pants or underwear and some classmates told me they had seen it on me.” The instructor was sanctioned for “inappropriate behavior” and suspended for fifteen days. She was in turn suspended for ten days. The world it also evokes the “generalized harassment” towards girls studying at the prestigious Military Academy of Saint-Cyr. The newspaper was able to consult a letter that the school’s trainers sent to the management to alert them to a “very worrying” situation, denouncing “conducts liable to disciplinary and criminal sanctions”. The newspaper talks about “like competitions” for girls organized on Whatsapp groups, which involve students but also superiors. He cites the case of a battalion in which the boys imposed a “ban on wearing thongs” on the girls. Girls are often not even spoken to or even looked at to denigrate them. Cases are reported where students are openly treated as “whores”. In November 2023, facts “of a sexual nature” were reported to justice. Some girls had reported “rapes”. “We don’t even reach 10% of female officer students – observes an officer speaking to the newspaper on condition of anonymity -. They are the first to abandon after three years of training, because the pressure, insults, isolation and lack of help are too strong.” From testimonies collected by the newspaper, the hierarchy would be aware of everything, but it is the “culture of silence” that prevails. Not for nothing, the prestigious Academy was called the “Great Mute” and Guillaume Ancel, a former lieutenant colonel who in a recent book (published in January by Flammarion) he talks about his three-year experience in the school, denouncing “an obsolete, ultra-Catholic, chauvinist culture that borders on the far right”.