While the Children’s Foundation unveiled, this Friday, April 17, 2026, the results of the third edition of a barometer devoted to ordinary educational violence (VEO), Midi Libre collected the testimony of today’s adults marked by the violence they suffered as children. Decades later, the painful mark is still there.
“My father gave me 70 strokes with the bar. I didn’t know the lesson by heart, to the word. I was just 7 years old.” It was 48 years ago and the memory is still intact. Married
in first grade at the time, had just illustrated his notebooks with big blue lines and revised 35 lessons for an end-of-year test. When her father asks her if she knows her course, the little girl replies “oui” without hesitation. Because she doesn’t recite it word for word, he asks her to go get the bar,
“a brass shoe horn decorated with a boat, at the end of the stem.”
“A silence, almost complicit”Seventy blows later, Marie has no memory of the questioning that followed. But three days later, during swimming lessons at school, an accompanying mother asked him where he came from. t “all those blue and purple marks.” She was a social worker. His father had often told him that he“couldn’t fool them” .“The beatings never helped me” underlines Marie, shocked at the absence of sanction towards your father, at the absence of a medical examination and discussion with the child that she was.
“Nothing. Just a vague impression that the problem was me in the face of this almost complicit silence.”
More than 80% of parents resort to verbal or psychological violence
The third barometer on so-called ordinary educational violence (VEO) carried out by the Children’s Foundation and the Prévéo research team was published this Friday, April 17, 2026 and reveals a worrying reality: 83% of parents report having resorted, at least once in the last 12 months, to verbal or psychological violence, and 37% to physical violence. The barometer highlights the persistence of violent practices in the education of children. In the past 12 months, 68% of parents report having ever yelled or shouted at the child, 22% have slapped the child’s bottom with their bare hands, 30% have slapped the child’s hand, arm or leg, and 19% have used demeaning words like “stupid” or
“lazy”.“These results show that ordinary educational violence remains deeply trivialized, even normalized”
underlines the press release from the Foundation for Children.
“Broom, crowbar, pearl necklace” Luc, 40 years old, grew up between foster families and homes from the age of 6 months. In his first foster family, he received a“very violent education” . From spankings to hitting with objects,“broom, crowbar, pearl necklace” the little boy is also “sequestered for 4 days in the dark” in his room and remembers having received
“a pressure cooker in the head”. At 11, when the girlfriend of one of the couple’s sons denounced this violence, Luc was placed in an emergency shelter. There, an educator will find“all the reasons to get into it” .
“He punched me in the bedroom, in front of the night watchman who said nothing and closed the door.” From this violence, the little boy remembers that“adults are bad”
. He ended up being welcomed into a violence-free home at the age of 14 and a half. Another emergency home, then a social children’s home (MECS) before ending up on the street for a year. Luc is now director of the home that took him in as a teenager.
The number 119 Hello childhood in danger reachable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week The 119 – National Telephone Support Service for Children in Danger
– is dedicated to the prevention and protection of children in danger or at risk of being in danger as well as adults confronted with or concerned about a situation involving a child in danger or at risk of being in danger: close family, extended family, neighbors, educational community, etc. free the service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for children, adolescents and young adults up to the age of 21.
In the event of serious and imminent danger, contact the police or gendarmerie 17 or 112, firefighters 18 or 112, Samu 15 or 114 and SMS for deaf and hard of hearing people.
“I arrived at school with a back full of bruises” Maxime 58 years old today, grew up in his family, “loveless”, “violent”
upon receipt of the school report. “As soon as I got a “C” and not an “A” or a “B”, I was beaten with a water hose about 30 cm long. I arrived at school with a back full of bruises.”Put in the cellar because of his father’s watch, damaged in his absence and which no longer worked, Maxime will stay there
he confided decades later, haunted by the nightmare of his childhood.The first name has been changed.
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