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The Globe and Mail (Canada)
November 26, 2011 Saturday
France's spousal mental cruelty law hits obstacles
BY: SUSAN SACHS
Like many of the desperate people who find their way to Yael Mellul's
Paris law office, this one was broken on the inside.
With two suitcases and her three young children in tow, the woman had
run away from her husband in the south of France after 10 years of
constant abuse. He told her she was ugly, she was a bad mother, she
was nothing and that he would kill her. Once he locked her in an attic
for a day with nothing to eat or drink.
For Ms. Mellul, the desperate woman's story placed her squarely within
the legal definition of a victim of domestic violence - not the kind
that leaves visible scars or broken bones, but the insidious,
soul-draining, psychological violence that is now a criminal offence
in France.
But when the husband and wife appeared in Family Court last week, the
judge treated the woman as the home-wrecker. Ms. Mellul said he
scolded her client, telling her, "Do you realize that you denied your
husband the right to see his children? Do you realize you are asking
me to chase him from his house?"
In France, "mental harassment" in a conjugal relationship is a
criminal offence. The penalties are the toughest in Europe. But nearly
a year and a half after the law was enacted, lawyers and psychologists
say the French judicial system and police have yet to understand it or
take it seriously.
"Every case is a battle," said Ms. Mellul, a fiery woman who was one
of the leading campaigners for passage of the 2010 law.
"Unfortunately, many police officers refuse to open a case charging
psychological violence. I have to fight for each one."
When the law was enacted last summer, it was applauded across the
political spectrum as a long overdue recognition that psychological
violence at home can be as deadly and brutal as physical abuse.
Criminal harassment is loosely defined as repeated humiliation, verbal
abuse or forced isolation of a partner. An abuser faces up to three
years of imprisonment and a fine of up to (EURO)75,000, far tougher
penalties than for harassment in the workplace.
When it was adopted, the French law was caricatured in the foreign
media as an opening for spouses to prosecute each other after every
spat. No one, though, has been tried or convicted under the law.
Instead, it has been raised as an argument in Family Court cases like
divorce and, even then, mainly in battles over child custody
arrangements.
But defining mental harassment as a crime has had little impact even
in civil cases, in the view of many experts in abuse.
Geneviève Reichert-Pagnard, a Paris-area psychiatrist, treats many
women who have suffered such constant humiliation at the hands of
their partners that they have sunk into depression or consider killing
themselves.
But the judges and the court system's own psychologists have not been
trained to recognize the signs of this "destructive manipulation," she
said.
"Magistrates continue to consider these cases like cases of ordinary
dispute between parents," Dr. Reichart-Pagnard added. "More and more
I'm seeing the courts take the children from the mother. In other
words, the victim is seen as the fragile parent and the aggressor is
considered the balanced and stabilizing parent."
Canada was a pioneer in labelling emotional abuse, at first mainly in
the form of stalking, as a serious offence within the panoply of
domestic abuse crimes. Since 2002, it carries a maximum prison
sentence of 10 years.
European countries also have tough laws against harassment in the
workplace and violence against women, who are the principal victims.
But they have been slower to equate psychological and physical abuse
in their penal codes, in part out of a reluctance to legislate
behaviour within a marriage or relationship.
After France, the toughest laws dealing with domestic mental cruelty
are in Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Poland, according to a recent
report by the Council of Europe that urged its 47 member countries to
follow suit in criminalizing psychological violence.
Armenia, one of the smallest members, has gone a step further in
specifically creating the crime of causing someone to commit suicide
"by means of threat, cruel treatment or regular humiliation of one's
dignity."
France has recognized domestic violence in all its forms as a real
problem. Of the 80,000 calls to help lines in 2009, according to the
government, 84 per cent involved psychological violence. Victims, too,
need educating on what constitutes psychological violence, according
to Ms. Mellul. Often they have been so beaten down by years of insults
and isolation that, like some battered women, they come to believe
that they must deserve it.
"The women - and it's usually women - have to see that what they are
living through is not acceptable, and a lot of times they no longer
know what is acceptable and what is not."
November 26, 2011 Saturday
France's spousal mental cruelty law hits obstacles
BY: SUSAN SACHS
Like many of the desperate people who find their way to Yael Mellul's
Paris law office, this one was broken on the inside.
With two suitcases and her three young children in tow, the woman had
run away from her husband in the south of France after 10 years of
constant abuse. He told her she was ugly, she was a bad mother, she
was nothing and that he would kill her. Once he locked her in an attic
for a day with nothing to eat or drink.
For Ms. Mellul, the desperate woman's story placed her squarely within
the legal definition of a victim of domestic violence - not the kind
that leaves visible scars or broken bones, but the insidious,
soul-draining, psychological violence that is now a criminal offence
in France.
But when the husband and wife appeared in Family Court last week, the
judge treated the woman as the home-wrecker. Ms. Mellul said he
scolded her client, telling her, "Do you realize that you denied your
husband the right to see his children? Do you realize you are asking
me to chase him from his house?"
In France, "mental harassment" in a conjugal relationship is a
criminal offence. The penalties are the toughest in Europe. But nearly
a year and a half after the law was enacted, lawyers and psychologists
say the French judicial system and police have yet to understand it or
take it seriously.
"Every case is a battle," said Ms. Mellul, a fiery woman who was one
of the leading campaigners for passage of the 2010 law.
"Unfortunately, many police officers refuse to open a case charging
psychological violence. I have to fight for each one."
When the law was enacted last summer, it was applauded across the
political spectrum as a long overdue recognition that psychological
violence at home can be as deadly and brutal as physical abuse.
Criminal harassment is loosely defined as repeated humiliation, verbal
abuse or forced isolation of a partner. An abuser faces up to three
years of imprisonment and a fine of up to (EURO)75,000, far tougher
penalties than for harassment in the workplace.
When it was adopted, the French law was caricatured in the foreign
media as an opening for spouses to prosecute each other after every
spat. No one, though, has been tried or convicted under the law.
Instead, it has been raised as an argument in Family Court cases like
divorce and, even then, mainly in battles over child custody
arrangements.
But defining mental harassment as a crime has had little impact even
in civil cases, in the view of many experts in abuse.
Geneviève Reichert-Pagnard, a Paris-area psychiatrist, treats many
women who have suffered such constant humiliation at the hands of
their partners that they have sunk into depression or consider killing
themselves.
But the judges and the court system's own psychologists have not been
trained to recognize the signs of this "destructive manipulation," she
said.
"Magistrates continue to consider these cases like cases of ordinary
dispute between parents," Dr. Reichart-Pagnard added. "More and more
I'm seeing the courts take the children from the mother. In other
words, the victim is seen as the fragile parent and the aggressor is
considered the balanced and stabilizing parent."
Canada was a pioneer in labelling emotional abuse, at first mainly in
the form of stalking, as a serious offence within the panoply of
domestic abuse crimes. Since 2002, it carries a maximum prison
sentence of 10 years.
European countries also have tough laws against harassment in the
workplace and violence against women, who are the principal victims.
But they have been slower to equate psychological and physical abuse
in their penal codes, in part out of a reluctance to legislate
behaviour within a marriage or relationship.
After France, the toughest laws dealing with domestic mental cruelty
are in Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Poland, according to a recent
report by the Council of Europe that urged its 47 member countries to
follow suit in criminalizing psychological violence.
Armenia, one of the smallest members, has gone a step further in
specifically creating the crime of causing someone to commit suicide
"by means of threat, cruel treatment or regular humiliation of one's
dignity."
France has recognized domestic violence in all its forms as a real
problem. Of the 80,000 calls to help lines in 2009, according to the
government, 84 per cent involved psychological violence. Victims, too,
need educating on what constitutes psychological violence, according
to Ms. Mellul. Often they have been so beaten down by years of insults
and isolation that, like some battered women, they come to believe
that they must deserve it.
"The women - and it's usually women - have to see that what they are
living through is not acceptable, and a lot of times they no longer
know what is acceptable and what is not."