Société: The impunity of ‘powerful’ men

The impunity of ‘powerful’ men

On the 10th of October, only five days after the revelation of the Weinstein scandal, the french magazine “Les Inrockuptibles” published an edition with Bertrand Cantat on the front cover.

This front page has come as a bombshell. Indeed : in 2003, Marie Trintignant died from the wounds inflicted by her partner, Bertrand Cantat, the singer of the famous French rock band Noir Désir. He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment but he only served three. This is the second time he is on the front cover of “Les Inrocks”. A lot of people, famous or not, reacted to this, such as Marlene Schiappa or Nadia Daam, a journalist who replaced the extract of the interview on the frontpage by an extract from the autopsy of Marie Trintignant.

This is not the first time that a famous man who has raped or murdered is being shown as an icon. Actually, the list of ‘powerful’ men whose careers are doing well after they have been violent is long, as we can see in Mirion Malle’s cartoon. Woody Allen, who had been accused of sexual aggression on his 7 year old daughter in 1993, has produced 29 movies since, even though his son Ronan Farrow has accused him several times. Still today, he remains unpunished. Roman Polanski, who was accused several times of sexual aggression, on minors, left the USA where he had been accused to continue his life in Europe without any problem. Recently, the film library of Paris launched a retrospective of his work, showing that exposing the work of a rapist is not really an issue for a lot of artistic structures or media.

Some people, such as the journalist who interviewed Cantat in “Les Inrocks”, believe that once the man has been judged and has served his sentence, he can keep on living just the way he used to before. But in the cases of Allen, Polansky and many others, famous men are not even judged for their acts, so they are obviously not punished. The biggest issue is that the victims are not believed, even if there is proof of violence or witnesses. The proof is often considered insufficient and the affaire is dropped. It works the same way for non famous men too. It explains why women don’t always press charges against their aggressors.

One can wonder, what can we do to change this situation. First of all, the victims need to be heard and believed. With only 2% of false rape accusations, trusting the victim will almost always be the good choice. Secondly, the media should stop inviting and promoting abusive artists, because their visibility shows that raping or murdering someone can be forgotten easily once out of jail. Last but not least, people should remember and honor the victims, as the Paradis sisters who posted a picture of Marie Trintignant on Instagram.