"Daddy, come and get me! " : face to face of a father and his underage daughter, victim of prostitution.
- Published on Monday, 30 March 2020 10:05
BOOK - In a rare testimonial book, Thierry Delcroix and his daughter Nina recount both the hell that led the teenage girl to prostitution and the fight led by her parents to save her?
All along this book, Nina recalls the chain of events which has lead her to prostitution and her enrolment by the pimps. At the beginning, a feeling of freedom. The minor tells about the difficulties she faced during her middle school years. As a good student, who was harassed by other children, she wanted to break up with this nice little girl image which sticked to her skin and which her stalkers kept reminding her. Nina saw in prostitution a way to catch attention, to stand out from others and to emancipate from her family, which was yet reassuring and safe. She says that she quickly became attracted by money, that she saw as a seduction weapon, able to provide her the fame she was looking for. READ >>>
Just like Nina, between 5000 and 8000 minors (according to EACP), almost exclusively french young girls aged between 13 and 17 years old, are victims of prostitution. Often reduced to the exploitation of unaccompanied foreign minors or an “estate pimping”, the prostitution of minors concerns all the social circles. Child Life specialists notice that these girls consider prostitution as a way to rise in society, when the “social elevator” didn’t work. This is what they call “the Zahia effect”, named after the minor girl who was offered as a “birthday gift” to the football player Franck Ribéry, and then established as a model of the free and modern woman by medias.
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To Nina, money was a way to assert herself through a prostitution as a “choice”.
Just like her, minor victims of prostitution, when trapped by her pimps, claim that they are “handling it” and that “everyone does this”. These expressions depict the process of dissociation set up by the girls to survive the violence of prostitution. It is an anaesthesia generated by the brain after a trauma, which gives the confusing impression that these minors are fully aware and conscious of their situation.
Nina was raped when she was 15. This violence made her suffer from a post-traumatic stress disorder and caused a discredit for her own body and image. “Since the rape I went through, I habe no consideration/esteem left for my body”, she says (p.88).
Nina explains that she locked herself in lies and refused to confide her malaise in her parents or to any of the professionals she met at the time.
“I’m seeing a psychologist once every fortnight since my family found out that I was skipping classes. I’m also playing a role in front of her. I lie to everyone. I tell her what my parents want to hear so she thinks I’m getting better. At that time, no advise, recommendation or reasoning can reach me” (p.41).
As she was alone to face the violence of the prostitutionnal system, Nina explains how she naturally began to use drugs : “After I had my first joints, I started enjoying cannabis. Just like alcohol, drugs helped me deal with myself.” (p.59).
Besides that, her father Thierry Delcroix reports how lonely the family felt during this fight. Unlike many parents, Thierry and Murielle Delcroix aren’t what social services call “failing parents”. They represent attachment figures. They never stopped making themselves available for their daughter by being very present and trying to dialogue with her.
The father denounces the inaction of the police precinct - in which he reported the several times his daughter ran away - but also the slowness of the judiciary institutions and the incompatibility of the Child Welfare Service. The institution - which was in charge of protecting his daughter - had not been able to give a proper speech/talk to the young lady that would have allowed her to stay out of danger.
This book strongly encourages the parents to remain patients and stay committed to their underaged daughter who is now traumatized and who suffer from a dissociative disorder.
Nina introduced this work by highlighting: "My parents have never let me down. They fought for months to help me get me out of this craziness I was deep intobut also protected me from the people who wanted to take advantage from it. I only now understand what they did, and I thank them for it. I think I owe them the fact that I'm still alive today..."(p.7-8) while her father concludes: "With this book, together, we can finally move on" (p.196)
JR, LR