Nancy. “Here, the child is ready to speak”: Mélanie room, a liberating speech tool for minor victims

Melanie? This is the first name of the first minor victim heard and filmed in the 1990s. Today, all these hearing spaces intended to liberate and collect the words of child victims of violence – mostly sexual violence suffered within the family – bear his first name. Thursday evening, Minister Aurore Bergé had a meeting with Mélanie from the Nancy police station.

“Here, the child is ready to speak”

A tool composed of three distinct rooms. A first, a sort of decompression airlock intended to build confidence. Play mats on the floor, stuffed animals, posters, toys… “There is no time limit in this room, nor in the others,” specifies the head of the Family Protection Group (GPF) in charge of these particularly difficult files, in response to one of Aurore Bergé’s questions.

Once the confidence-building phase is over, the little victim will settle into the room itself, Mélanie. This is the contrast with the first. No toys. A sofa, a round glass table, the softness of the colors… and, of course, the video. “Here, the child is ready to speak,” continues the head of the GPF, a group made up of 10 officials trained in this specialty, including seven judicial police officers (OPJ).

“The room is deliberately neutral so as not to disrupt the interview with the child. » A conversation recorded from the third neighboring room: a sort of mini-technical studio where a police operator follows and listens to the interview remotely via screen and microphone. With the possibility of interacting by headset with the official who questions the little victim. Once the hearing is over, it is recorded on a CD and placed under judicial seal.

The system of these Mélanie rooms “has proven itself in several respects”, underlines Aurore Bergé. “These are places to build confidence with trained staff. Before, there was no place to channel this trauma but, what’s more, we made the child relive it. A child does not verbalize like an adult and this called into question his alleged inconsistencies because he had not used the same term in the first hearing and the third; it worked against him in the procedure. There is therefore this issue of better protection of the child and speed. »

“Reporting is protecting”

Speaking, especially when you are a child, “is a process that requires courage that sometimes too many people underestimate,” notes the minister.

“Revealing the violence that we have had to endure requires a great deal of courage”, and all the more so if it takes place, as is often the case, in a family environment “which, in principle, should be the most protective setting, but sometimes it is the setting which produces and allows the violence to occur”.

And Aurore Bergé insists on the fact that reporting “is protection and not denunciation”. Clara Ziegler, deputy prosecutor at the Nancy public prosecutor’s office, responds by evoking article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the obligation imposed “on a health professional to report these facts”.

France currently has 280 Mélanie rooms, including six in Meurthe-et-Moselle.