File a claim... Before getting into it, we don't realize at all what it entails...
Yet I have "a little experience" in the courts. My divorce and the battle for the custody of my daughters lasted 7 years... So I have already been confronted with judges, several lawyers, the slowness of the process, the wait for months, the verdicts... .
A year ago, I finally made the decision to take steps to file a complaint. A year. And I'm still at a standstill and this weekend I have to make a very difficult decision.
It's been a year since it happened? I did not sit idly by. I found a first lawyer. The time to fix an appointment with him, to decide our "strategy"...
We must not hide our face, justice is such that we must choose where to file a complaint and how. File a complaint at a police station? Which? With people trained at least in dissociation? Trained in sectarian excesses? Filing a complaint by writing to the Prosecutor? You have to be strategic because unfortunately the reality is such that very few professionals are trained and my testimony is rather complex...
So I put my complaint in writing. This has not been easy ! I had to overcome a lot of pain and physical sensations, emotions, flashbacks... Because to write what we experienced is to remember, to relive everything that was done to us...
I succeeded and sent it to my lawyer. His strategy was that we send my complaint to the Prosecutor.
To give you an example of dates:
First contact with my lawyer in March 2021, in April he contacted me again and I sent him my documents in the file. In August, we fix the date of the first appointment between us. In September, he asked me to write my letter to the Prosecutor, my testimony, dating and specifying the places and the facts. In October I send him the document that I wrote and ask him to give me feedback to find out if there is any information missing or if I can send it that way. In November, he told me that he had to add the criminal qualification of the facts. I therefore await his return. He answers me in February 2022 with these criminally qualified facts.
During the first meeting I had with my lawyer, he was wonderful, very caring and attentive, very reassuring... I felt confident. Then over the months of waiting, I started to tell myself that I couldn't start such a process if I didn't feel supported. The silence of all these months, the uncertainty... All of this was too anxiety-provoking for me. So I decided to change lawyers.
Back to square one.
First meeting with my new lawyer. This meeting was very, very trying for me! This time, the lawyer I met was a "lawyer", not a shrink, not a caring and attentive friend. I don't quite know how to explain. She was a "professional", in her role as a lawyer who coldly says what I can expect from justice and what I will not get. Meticulous, observant. I had the impression of passing a test that day. A test to see if I'm going into a spin, if I'm solid, if I'm realistic, if I'm motivated to fight and what I want to fight for... The lawyer "played" the defense lawyer That day. She told me everything that could or could be thrown in my face if I was interviewed by the police and found myself on the stand testifying before a judge and jury. Am I sure I have a TDI? Wouldn't a DID be a psychosis? Couldn't I be hallucinating? Other lawyers will say I'm making it up or that I'm crazy.... TDI is controversial. I describe incredible and implausible facts. DID is iatrogenic (influenced by a societal "fad")... What is the purpose of this complaint? What am I expecting? Why take this step and not go through other and more "easier" ways to "say" such as writing a book or continuing on this blog?
It was extremely trying! Several times I wanted to get up and go out. In my head, my dissociative parts were screaming. I had to control my emotions. My "little" dissociative parts were very hurt by it with the impression that she was not engaging, not telling us clearly whether she believed us or not or whether she was willing to take our file and fight for us.
A few days after this appointment, I spent several very difficult days! It was screaming in my head!! "They don't believe us! We don't trust! We want to stop everything!".
It took me several days to restore calm inside and reason with everyone.
Accepting that a lawyer is not a shrink or a "benevolent" person, that on the contrary, the fact that she is cold and methodical, that she hides nothing from me and warns me from the outset on what I will have to face and endure is a pledge of honesty. The world of justice is based on facts and evidence. He has no affect, no feeling, no emotions. He looks at the facts and based on the evidence he finds, he does justice.
I thought about. What do I expect from this complaint?
I really realized in the face of this confrontation that I had to separate my psychic reconstruction and my process of complaining.
Since I started to work in therapy, to understand that I have DID, to dialogue better, to cooperate internally, I have been fighting two separate battles.
Rebuild myself, get better in my present, identify my reactivations and manage them better so that they no longer hinder my present, create an inner climate of listening, trust, collaboration to reduce my daily suffering, my conflicts over my choices in my present.
And move forward in the internal dialogue, make sure that each of my dissociative parts cooperate, that I no longer have dissociative barriers, amnesia in order to be able to testify to the police.
Two objectives at two speeds. The first is a long-term job where the slightest improvement requires weeks or even months of dialogue, compromise... Modifying my tendencies to action, modifying my beliefs, modifying my pessimistic view of the world, agreeing to reflect, accepting to dialogue, accept to question my vision of the world, of human relations and to make new experiences... All of this takes a lot of time and it is daily work that requires a lot of energy, a lot of time, a lot patience. Track each reaction, find my triggers, mentalize, do metacognition, find my reaction patterns... Accept that feelings and emotions that I have always avoided, anger for example, my "angry parts" come into my daily life . To allow myself to listen to their anger, to see the world with their eyes, to let them "act" and react in my present... And to accept the upheaval that this can generate for me and for my loved ones... It is not not easy to "change" your way of being. Go from "passive", "conciliatory", "sacrificial" to a certain form of selfishness, opposition, to allow yourself to say no...
And at the same time, having certain parties who want everything that we have experienced, in every detail, to be shared so that we can testify and be believed by the police. Except that this sharing takes time, that it upsets, that it jeopardizes our balance, our stability in our present. What is sharing, the end of dissociative amnesia? It is to face the betrayals of those around us, it is to relive the rapes in our pulpit and in our head. Having not only the sensations, the emotions, the abject tastes, the smells, the words... A destructive tsunami that goes against the survival strategies that we have put in place, of our TDI. This lens is pretty atrocious. With prescription as a deadline. Prescription fast approaching. On the one hand we struggle to be better in our present, to feel safe, free. And on the other, we "force" ourselves to move forward and face our past and so we voluntarily "plunge" ourselves back into insecurity, pain, horror and thereby upset the balance of our here. All because justice decided that the dissociative amnesia, the strategies of the victims of extreme violence were not valid, not sufficient to give them time to cope with their rhythm, to be solid and reconstructed enough to ask justice and recognition for the crimes committed against them.
My lawyer asked me to rework my testimony, separating the facts that I was certain of and the beliefs or assumptions that I had. This is a point that I find difficult to integrate. I find that there really is a gap between justice and the advancement of scientific and psychological knowledge! Post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder have in common the fact that memories are fragmented, strewn with invading emotions, physical sensations... That in these two disorders, the person has a phobia of his memories, a tendency to deny the reality of the horror experienced. That often these flashbacks are accompanied by derealization, depersonalization which accentuate the impression of unreality of the experience. So I had written my testimony by sprinkling it with "I believe that", "I think that". I find it paradoxical that in order to be taken seriously, believed by justice, the latter denies the very proof of our suffering which manifests itself in psychological symptoms. In fact, justice asks us to do the work before it of verifying our evidence of what we have experienced.
I find this paradoxical since it will be the very condition, the reason for a conviction or not by the courts. And the question arises of how to gather evidence when it is an entire society that has decided to turn a blind eye to the reality of the prevalence of violence against minors? The adults in the cult, my relatives, my mother... Everyone closed their eyes. When I talk to them, the vast majority of them tell me that they don't remember anything, that they don't want to remember, that they haven't seen anything. So how can I validate my statements?
The other child victims with me, what can I do when all my memories are shadows of bodies whose faces I cannot see, muffled tears without names? My dissociative memory exploded when my father died. And theirs? How can I look for victims other than myself if I can't remember who's there with me? And they, will they be ready to face their past like I do? Are they doing it?
I told myself that I had to move on and go all the way. So I wrote my complaint as requested by my lawyer, gathered the evidence I have and I sent it to her. We had agreed that sending a complaint directly to the Prosecutor was not the right strategy, so my lawyer contacted a police brigade she knew and sent them my complaint. This brigade replied that it did not accept my file because the facts were too old and that they took "urgent" files with immediate dangers. That in my complaint, there were deceased rapists and that this would require too long and tedious investigative work. And that I am the only complainant at the moment and that they take cases with several complainants because they are more "solid". And finally, that my memories of being raped at two and three years old are impossible and therefore must be "induced memories".
Mega slap!!!
My lawyer finally decides that the best strategy is that I send my complaint to the Prosecutor and that I rewrite my complaint by deleting everything that risks making "ticks".
So denying and keeping quiet about everything I experienced before the age of 8, denying and ignoring the rapes of the monk, of my father. Denying gang rapes of children. All this, justice does not want to hear. There is no such thing.
This is the "choice" left to me by justice.
If I accept this "watered down" version of what I experienced and what was done to me, justice would surely agree at least to audition me, I might be entitled to a trial and possibly the right to judicial recognition.
If I refuse and testify to everything that has been done to me, if I show my dissociative parts, if I bring up my DID, I will be taken for a fool, I will certainly not have a police hearing and I will receive definitely a non-place.
I am devastated, disgusted and lost. It screams inside me!!!
I'll take a few days to think it over. Ask myself the question of what does this complaint process represent for us? What do I expect from it? What is important to me?