“In a way, he faked a suicide.” Singer Kendji Girac was hospitalized this week after being shot, explaining that he had “voluntarily shot himself” with a revolver in order to “scare” his wife who was threatening to leave him. “I wanted to make Soraya hear the sound of the trigger, so that she wouldn’t leave,” he said, according to his words reported by the prosecutor.
Since these revelations, the singer’s gesture has been linked to the issue of suicide blackmail within the couple, a process that is regularly found in cases of psychological and domestic violence.
“This is a truly particular question that must be clearly decorrelated from the suicidal intention, the suicidal impulse and the suicide attempt in a person unfortunately prey to extreme melancholy, to intolerable suffering,” note d’ straight away Armelle Vautrot, researcher and therapist specializing in trauma. This type of summons is “a takeover of power which submits the other: if you leave me, I will kill myself. This implies: you will be responsible for my death. »
On the “violometer” – tool to raise awareness of domestic violence – the fact that a person “threatens to commit suicide because of you” is one of the strongest alerts and ranks at level 19 on a scale of 24.
The therapist says she encounters this type of threat “very often” in her work. In the 2021 Genesis survey, conducted by the ministerial statistical service for internal security (SSMSI), 32% of women victims of psychological violence in a relationship explained that they had been “blackmailed into harming themselves in the event of a breakup”, 23% of male victims made the same observation. “It is sometimes people within the couple and sometimes children and adolescents within their family” who experience it, adds Armelle Vautrot.
“A strong signal of femicide”
This blackmail is strong psychological violence: “The person opposite feels guilty, responsible, they are afraid” of the suicide of the other, explains Chantal Paoli-Texier, president and founder of the AJC association for the rights of victims of intra-family moral violence. This “establishes a real system of terror within the couple or the family: no one will dare to express themselves, to contradict, for fear of being responsible for carrying out this blackmail,” says Armelle Vautrot. It is trapping the other with the greatest responsibility: the right of life or death. »
With these threats, or even an act, “the author diverts his responsibility by placing it on the other: look what you make me do », continues Chantal Paoli-Texier. A mechanism that we find also in cases of physical violence.
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The specialists interviewed note, however, that suicide blackmail within a couple is not necessarily synonymous with physical violence. But it’s ” a strong signal for femicide, with an author who then commits suicide,” warns Nathalie Rocailleux, clinical psychologist and founder of the AFL Transition association, specializing in the treatment of intra-family violence. In this sense, “a threat of suicide is a threat of death for the woman,” she adds, emphasizing the “unbelievable psychological violence” of this process.
For Armelle Vautrot, “physical violence is not confined to visible bruises” because being in a situation of psychological domination, of control, is “to be in pain, to no longer sleep, to no longer eat properly…” Chantal Paoli-Texier adds that the victims of these acts can in turn have suicidal desires: “They are pushed to the limit, can no longer bear living with death at their side.” Even without blows, “there is a real trauma”.
“Disengage from submission”
Those who are at the origin of these death blackmails can find themselves in “real distress, real suffering” which they impose on others, explains Nathalie Rocailleux, and must be treated. We thus find this type of behavior in people affected borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by hyperemotionality and hypersensitivity, with for example difficulty controlling anger or a great fear of being abandoned. For Armelle Vautrot, although there may be suffering in the author, it is above all an act of domination over the other.
In all cases, if you are a victim of these behaviors, the therapist advises opening up to people you trust, knowing that “the most difficult thing will be to disengage from submission and therefore from the illusion of responsibility that the other puts pressure on you. » “We have to leave, leave the home where we will remain under influence, and go to structures that can help on a legal and psychological level,” says Nathalie Rocailleux.
If you are a victim of psychological or physical violence, you can go to one of the 98 Information centers on the rights of women and families (CIDFF) distributed across French territory, or contact 3919which supports women victims of violence.
