At 14, Elena Faure came across the wrong people at the wrong time, in a small alley in the north of France. Three men violently sexually assaulted her, but she kept this dark secret within herself and only spoke about it six years later. Anorexia, epileptic seizures and discomfort punctuate her daily life as a young girl… Then, everything resurfaces during her pregnancy. Testimony.
The day after the Christmas holidays, Elena Faure*, then aged 14, was allowed to go out alone in the city center for the first time, accompanied by her sister and her boyfriend. To avoid holding a candle, she asks him if she can go to a store and join them later. It was then that she came across three men in their thirties who approached her and asked for her phone number. She pretends not to have one, but her mother tries to contact her: the ringtone rings and betrays her words. “The tone rises, they brutalize me, grab me by the arm and take me a few meters further, into a parking lot” the young woman tells us. Her attackers burn her chin with a cigarette, hold her down by beating her in the stomach, force her to perform fellatio and sexual touching… Then try to drag her to their car. Her survival instinct pushed her to scream at the top of her lungs, which probably saved her from the clutches of her captors since a man in his forties arrived at that moment.
Elena starts running and calls her sister, without telling her what had just happened. To avoid making the eldest, who was responsible for her little sister, feel guilty, but also because she feared that her parents would restrict her future outings. “At that time, my father was ill, I was afraid to talk about all that. The first outing was terrifying for me, I also feared that people would no longer trust me and I felt that it was not the right time to talk about it“, she explains to us.
Elena decides to tell her parents everything at the age of 20
But the weight of this secret, which lasted several years before words were released, caused heavy trauma. Her body has paid the price: Elena feels unwell, falls intoanorexia mentally, has repeated epileptic attacks, without anyone understanding the cause of this discomfort. “I had MRIs done and one of the doctors who observed a varicose vein on the left side of my brain explained to my parents that it was definitely from a emotional shock“.
“At 20, I told my parents everything” says Elena. Her father jumped out of his chair, in tears, but she didn’t really understand the reaction of her mother, who remained “frozen”, without saying a word. She would realize years later that her mother lived, she too, had a trauma when she was young and she had a black hole when she learned of her own daughter’s attack. Over time, Elena managed to get out of it, in particular thanks to the help from a hypnotherapist who made her aware of the serious events that had happened, but above all, that she had managed, by shouting, to “save her skin”.
Pregnant, relief to learn she was expecting a boy
When she became pregnant, everything accelerated, and while she had hoped to have a little girl, Elena was more than relieved to learn that it was a little boy at the time of the birth.ultrasound. The sex of the baby was ultimately essential for her, so that she would not fear on a daily basis that the same pattern would repeat itself. “It had to happen this way for everything to go well. The arrival of my little boy was beneficial: it helped me to take charge of myself, to eradicate everything from my head to take better care of him.”
Her memories come back during pregnancy
Strangely, while everything was going well, his worst memories came flooding back. “Right after the ultrasound, I started having the same nightmares. But trauma resurfaces during pregnancy: whatever they are, there is a psychological part that makes old wounds come to the surface, a way of cleaning it all up and being able to move on.” Elena analyzes.
Today the mother of two little boys, Elena is a fulfilled and well-rounded woman. But she nonetheless remains fearful and very strict about the safety of her children. “As a mother, I’m rather extreme. I’m afraid when my son asks me if he can go sleep at a friend’s house, I don’t trust summer camps… Even if I did a big work on myself, there are still consequences“, confides Elena, who is counting on her dad, Gatien, to help her put everyday life into perspective. Her goal now: to break the silence on this taboo and encourage all victims of sexual violence to confide and speak as quickly as possible. .
Thanks to Elena Faure, author of the book “For you, for me and all the others” (editions Trois Colonnes), for her testimony. *First and last name have been changed.