Caroline Rey-Salmon, vice-president of Ciivise, a commission that fights against incest, was accused of sexual assault by a 25-year-old woman, which allegedly occurred during a gynecological examination.
This Monday, February 5, the new Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children (Ciivise) took office. This is under the government responsibility of the Minister of Health, Catherine Vautrin. Just one day after its introduction, the vice-president of the commission, Caroline Rey-Salmon, was the subject of serious accusations.
As reported by Franceinfo, and confirmed by AFP, a 25-year-old woman claimed to have been the victim of sexual assault during a gynecological examination with Caroline Rey-Salmon, a professional doctor. She went to the police station to file a complaint this Tuesday, February 6.
According to the story she gave to Franceinfo, the facts date back to June 2020. The complainant would have been examined by the specialist as part of an investigation for incest. The young woman claimed to have been the victim of sexual assault during her childhood and this is why the minor protection brigade would have turned at the time to Caroline Rey-Salmon, forensic pediatrician and legal expert, to carry out a gynecological expertise .
That day, the young woman would have gone to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris. The alleged victim said that the specialist first told her that she could not have “suffered vaginal rape because her hymen was not torn” and that her supposed attacker would therefore have instead “rubbed” at She.
To support her theory, Caroline Rey-Salmon then wanted to simulate the inappropriate gesture on the young woman, to make her understand that it was not an attack. To do this, she would have touched his private parts. “She put her fingers on my penis, she said to me: ‘Close your eyes, imagine that there is the penis of the attacker who is on you. Don’t you think that he was doing rather this gesture?’ […] She made the back and forth gesture on my penis several times,” the complainant told Franceinfo. Traumatized by this examination, she considers today having experienced “a new sexual assault during the expertise”.
If the young woman decided to speak out only four years later, it is because at the time, she was already struggling with the steps to have the incest she allegedly suffered recognized, not wishing to make the process more complicated. However, it was the discovery of the names of the new management team of the Civiise which would have made it click for him. The appointment of Caroline Rey-Salmon would have revolted her: “Being at the head of the Ciivise whose aim is precisely to fight against sexual violence and protect children, I have no confidence at all. “once again I feel like society is laughing at me.”
Franceinfo then contacted Caroline Rey-Salmon who disputes the facts but who did not wish to say more. That being said, the “reconstitution” method denounced by the complainant would have already been approved by the doctor. Franceinfo, in fact, got its hands on writings by Caroline Rey-Salmon in Les Cahiers de la Justice dating from 2018 where the specialist would have written: “Children misunderstand their genital anatomy […] and do not have the words to describe what they suffered. It is the whole point of doing with the child on the examination table a sort of reconstruction of the attacker’s actions and collecting their sensations to be as close as possible to the unfolding of events”. Practices which are not at all validated by other specialists contacted by the media.
Caroline Rey-Salmon informed AFP this Wednesday February 7 that she was withdrawing from Ciivise as demanded by certain associations.
