“Child protection is not a priority for the authorities” | EUROtoday

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EIt has a thousand lives. Pilot of the CIIVISE working group on on-line pedocrime, she additionally signed the guide Behind the display: struggle the explosion of on-line pedocrimerevealed by Stock in 2024. Véronique Béchu, police commander, lives her job as a priesthood, devoted to the struggle towards sexual violence over kids for 23 years.

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At 50, within the police since 2002, she has chosen an availability, to go to the opposite aspect, get entangled in prevention on this theme, earlier than the kids had been victims. Convinced that the grooming (dealing with approach geared toward trapping a minor for sexual functions), Sextorsions, sexualized challenges on social networks, the Revenge Porn Can lower because of this dedication, she joins the E-Enfance affiliation, a long-standing associate of the minor workplace for which she labored till then.

The level: Why did that you must change posts, to depart your work as an investigator on sexual violence towards kids to interact in an affiliation that fights towards the identical info?

Véronique Béchu: When you’re an investigator and obtain 170,000 stories from web platforms over the yr, it’s a tidal wave. We say to ourselves: “What am I doing, which one to take today? It’s a bit desperate, it’s a submersion. I always want to work for the protection of children and in particular on the facts disseminated online, but from another angle. To be effective, you have to take into account the overall phenomena, and not only from the angle of repression.

When we challenge pedocriminals, we feel very useful because they are individuals from the top of the offense spectrum that we put out of harm to harm but we tell ourselves that there are still so many others. And the implementation of partnerships, projects notably for international cooperation, assistance to investigators, prevention, all of this forms a whole. In recent years I have started this transition, but I want to intensify it outside the institutional field. The E-Enfance association struggles upstream so that there are fewer victims and already works in connection with the omin (minor office) from where I come from.

I absolutely do not flee the legal world but I think that, after 23 years, it is time for me to see something else, at least for a time, to give me a new dynamic that could feed me professionally to come back perhaps one day.

Do you think you will be more useful outside the investigator?

It is not that I went around, because we have never been around, but I am full of ideas and after a while, we may be a little disillusioned to see that what we believe, that the ideas that cross us are not necessarily debated or that our projects, our proposals remain a dead letter when we know the interest that there would be to develop them. I note that child protection is not a priority for authorities and in public policies. This translates concretely into the means allocated to the investigation services. We will favor other delinquency themes. For example, we had to create a Papeete antenna in Polynesia.

We know the extent of sexual violence against minors in this territory, moreover a working group at the CIIVISE is dedicated to overseas. It would take at least five numbers for that, but no position has been created, so there will be no antenna there. When the OFMIN was created, the objective was 85 staff at the end of 2024. In the end, they are currently about fifty. It holds, it works, because colleagues are ultra-engaged, but it is very often to the detriment of their personal life on the one hand and victims who await the intervention of investigators on the other.

Do you think some action sections are neglected?

It must be said clearly, the theme is not necessarily a priority for several reasons: minors do not vote and the fight against violence against minors costs money, it does not report. We have nothing to seize. When we challenge the authors, unlike the drugs or pure financial files, we do not grasp any criminal or very little. In an incest file for example, we are not going to seize the house which served the commission of facts … where would the victim go then?

The authorities forget or do not want to see that when we protect a child, we act actively on the future of our society, clearly we bet on the future. When we protect children, we also act so that they are not the authors, tomorrow. For an upcoming conference, I reviewed seven files of OFMIN concerning minors who are authors of sexual violence. Well, everyone said they had been victims of sexual violence. This reproduction dynamic must be taken into account.

The CIIVISE (Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against children) has estimated what is the absence of assumption of victims of sexual violence in childhood. Per year, it is 9.6 billion euros spent by the State, because it includes the problems of addiction, dropping out, lack of training, psychological, drug care, etc. Better support for victims would prevent there be news.

Is it on prevention that there is a room for maneuver?

Yes, I think it intimately. Investigators must be able to focus on files with the most serious offenses. With good multidisciplinary prevention for the whole of society, certain cyberpedocriminal phenomena, such as the grooming Or sextrition, could initiate a drastic drop in cases. An example: it is necessary to explain to everyone that from an innocuous image of a child, an artificial intelligence tool can create pedocriminal content which will serve as a means of pressure to obtain from this same child another content often more violent, humiliating or degrading when at the base he had only made a photo of him leaving a victorious football or rugby match. This would make it possible to understand the minors and their entourage that we must avoid posting photos of them.

Within the association, I have both a mission of alert on these subjects but also a role of highlighting all the legislative developments necessary to be as close as possible to the reality of illicit behavior committed with regard to minors. For example, sexual deepfakes, it is an offense created within the framework of the SREN law (secure and regulate the digital space) in 2024 but no one thought of including an aggravating circumstance when the content created stage minors.

What are your other missions?

I occupy the post of director of the Digital Violence Observatory made to the miners E-E-Enfance 3018. This association has held since its creation in 2005, and since the listening platform is 3018, a mass of data that must be processed, analyzing, highlighting with regard to pedocriminal phenomena and online harassment or not. The goal is to be as close as possible to what children live online, preserve them or take care of them correctly.

Each year a transparency report will be transmitted to the Arcom since the association has been “belief signaleur” since last November and can directly request cuts in content from net platforms. In this context, I will carry out a state of the threat, an inventory of digital violence against children. This will aim to support the orientations of public policies in this area.

The other part that I would like to develop within e-childish is international cooperation. Because via new modes of communication, the victim can be in France and the author at the other end of the world. The links with European bodies, in which many challenges are played out and the network that I have been able to develop abroad for many years, will most certainly be an asset for e-child.

How does the association you join work with the police?


To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

Answer



I’ve been working with e-childings for ten years. He is a para-institutional trusted associate. This acknowledged public utility affiliation works with OFMIN, the OCRETH (Central Office for the Repression of the Trading of Human beings), Pharos, with the devoted nationwide gendarmerie providers, many ministries (National Education, Justice, Health, Interior). Via quantity 3018, E-Enfance receives testimonials from kids and pedocriminal content material, since kids could make screenshots of what they endure and put them in security within the secure of the cellular software 3018. It is commonly simpler for kids to denounce what they endure by the chat of the appliance than to name and communicate to an grownup.

Thus, along with the direct motion of the affiliation with web platforms to have the accounts blocked and delete illicit content material, e-child now has the opportunity of immediately reporting to investigators notably worrying conditions and which name for fast intervention by repressive providers. We all achieve effectivity for kids. So I’ll proceed to work with my former colleagues, however in one other means.


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