Images of burning forests. Islands of freshness ravaged by fire. With perhaps, behind… the idea of a deliberate gesture. Since the beginning of summer, thanks to drought and intense heat linked to global warming, devastating fires have multiplied. Since mid-July, more than 20,000 hectares have burned in Gironde, causing the evacuation of 36,750 people after two fire starts. A few days later, in Brittany, two fires took place in Finistère, ravaging 1,771 hectares in one week. Finally, finally, in the Hérault, nearly 1,000 hectares were destroyed by the flames. Every time, or almost, the criminal track is considered.
South of Arcachon, the first outbreak of fire in La Teste-de-Buch would be of accidental origin. For the second, near the village of Landiras, the criminal track is privileged. The public prosecutor of Bordeaux, Frédérique Porterie, has also indicated that a judicial investigation was opened on July 22. In Brittany, the fires of the Monts d’Arrée would also be of criminal origin. Two investigations were opened for “willful destruction by fire of wood, forest, moors, maquis or plantation”. Finally, in the Hérault, the Montpellier prosecutor’s office also instructed an investigation on Tuesday July 26. “The proximity of the two starts of fire necessarily leads to a criminal hypothesis and it is on this sole basis that a judicial investigation was opened, entrusted to the gendarmerie company of Lodève”, he indicated. With each case, the image of the “arsonist” comes back to haunt the collective imagination. But how to explain the motivations of those who cause these devastating outbreaks of flames?
A debate between doctors and lawyers
The arsonist was first identified and defined as such in the 19th century. In 1833, the French psychiatrist Charles-Chrétien Henri Marc coined the term “pyromania” in the Annals of Public Hygiene and Forensic Medicine. In line with the theories of the period, the practice is placed in the box of monomania, in the same way as erotomania, paranoia, or even kleptomania. At the time, the specialist separated this disorder into two types: the first was an irrepressible obsession with setting fire, consubstantial with an individual; the second is motivated by an external element, such as revenge or jealousy. Disseminated by a disciple of Henri Marc, the alienist Jean-Etienne Esquirol, the notion nevertheless debate between doctors and lawyers. The latter clash on the question of the irresponsibility of the individual. On the one hand, the mandarins, who argue that the arsonists’ lack of remorse is a sign of their alienation. On the other, the jurists, who on the contrary see it as proof of his responsibility.
Over the decades, the discussion would spread even within the medical profession, with more and more practitioners refusing to see pyromania as a specific medical category. Until the last century, the case studies see in the arsonist a “simple spirit, full of nostalgia, whose social and hereditary origins would be disadvantaged and marked by alcoholism”, as explained by a article of the Swiss medical journal. It was not until 1951 that a monograph of two American researchers, Nolan DC Lewis and Helen Yarnell, define the behavior associated today with pyromania: a gesture performed after an irrational impulse, which is motivated by no objective reason.
A complex concept to define
The concept, quite broad, covers several types of “fire triggers”. “The term is overused today: not all those who are placed in the arsonist category are necessarily so”, notes Professor Michel Bénézech, specialist in criminal psychiatry. Finished the two categories of Henri Marc. Today, we prefer to distinguish the arsonist from the arsonist. “When the first acts on an impulse, the second often triggers the fire out of revenge. His action has a specific goal, a resentment towards an identified person, continues the specialist. The arsonist relieves his frustration in the departure of fire, which means that once his misdeed has been accomplished, he will not start again a priori”, estimates Dr Pierre Lamothe, former head doctor of the Mental Health Center for detainees and legal psychiatry in Lyon and honorary expert approved by the Court of cassation.
“Not all those who are placed in the arsonist category are necessarily so”
Conversely, the arsonist seems led to start over: according to a study published in 2014 and conducted on a sample of 441 Finnish fire starters between 1973 and 1998, the criminal acts recur with a frequency of approximately six weeks. According to several British studies, up to a quarter of arson attacks are thus caused by repeat offenders. The intensity of fire outbreaks would also generally increase over time. An American study carried out on a panel of 21 subjects in 2007 clarified this robot portrait. The arsonist, far from evolving on the margins of society, would often be a well-integrated young adult, aged 18 to 35, who starts fires in the region in which he lives. But this description should be taken with a grain of salt: complex to define and study, pyromania is often only studied on relatively small samples.
A desire for rebellion
Above all, this sketch of a composite portrait does not explain the motivations of these individuals either. These are not necessarily linked to a latent psychiatric problem, as was thought in the 19th century. “You can have a ‘normal’ personality with an instinctual problem that moves on the fire”, explained Dr Ivan Gasman, psychiatrist and head of the unit for difficult patients Henri Colin in Villejuif (Ile-de-France ) weekly Science and future. The pathology was also evaded, in 2013, from a reference work Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Their fascination with fire and, even more, their desire to take action would be more related to social issues. “There is first of all a desire to revolt against society, against a social order, without being caught. It is for this reason that arsonists are generally well integrated: they only express their dissatisfaction with authority in these fire starts”, continues Pierre Lamothe. This “discharge” of resentment would also allow them to experience a feeling close to omnipotence. Thus, according to the Swiss medical journale, “firepower is used for acts promoting social recognition, being admired, feared or helped”.
Firefighter-arsonist
In the 1970s, the psychiatrist Ben Soussan analyzed that by setting fire, the arsonist would fill “a feeling of inferiority. It is a need to show off in this way, so well by putting the fire than by extinguishing it”. Or, in a few words, the famous case of the firefighter-arsonist. In 2016, in California, a former firefighter was sentenced to five years in prison and to reimburse 246,832 dollars to the Californian forest department for having caused around thirty fire starts between 2006 and 2007. In court, the man has mentioned a few reasons to explain his actions: boredom, the desire to make more money by turning them off… And that of impressing his colleagues. “There is also a kind of emulation and stimulation caused by the increase in fires. The arsonist may want to reproduce, better, what he has seen elsewhere in the media”, continues Pierre Lamothe. He wants, in short, to start a fire which would be “bigger” than that of his neighbor, a few regions further. “It’s a competition, the game of which is increased tenfold by the fact of not being caught”, ends the psychiatrist.
However, the arsonist risks a lot. If he is not declared a delusional psychotic – an individual in whom the abolition of judgment can be advanced – he is responsible before the law. A person who voluntarily lights a fire incurs up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 150,000 euros. A sentence that can go up to 15 years in prison if the fire ravages a forest or a maquis.