How to combat harassment? Let’s listen to the victims!

“What prevention against harassment?” To answer this somewhat binary question, I took the LFM microphone for the program “Vous d’abord” at the edge of the lake in Yverdon. I’m used to doing it every day, a bit like others walk their dog, but now, I have to say, I come away upset. I have to tell you.

My question was: “What to do to fight against harassment, whether it is at school, professional, on the street, in friendship or in love for example. And could we do prevention to avoid all of this? This question led to great encounters, as always. But above all four moments suspended in time.

First of all, this 22 year old girl who admits to me that she is harassed by her ex on a daily basis. She talks about her fear. Of his shame in talking about it. “He is violent in his words but he wouldn’t hurt me, so I don’t want to file a complaint. And then my family wouldn’t believe me.”

Then, a little further on, a woman in her fifties talks about the harassment she suffered from her ex-colleague and superior. She sweats with emotion and trembles. And yet, that was a few years ago.

After a few minutes of micro-beaching – all this happened at the lakeside in Yverdon on Tuesday – I met a forty-year-old who asked me not to record, but who admitted to me that he himself had been a harasser in class and later towards his partner. To my question “But why?”, he tells me about this childhood in which, from his father, he heard on a daily basis, “you are worthless, you will end up in prison, you don’t know how to do anything”, and this desire to prove the opposite by humiliating others and showing who is the boss.

Since then, he has been in therapy but feels guilty for having, I quote, “demolished comrades and his wife”. And then without having found an answer to my question “How to prevent harassment”, I risked one last meeting. And there, it is a moment suspended in time. Fabio (not his real name – I didn’t ask him his first name) tells me, off-air, about his descent into hell.

Bullied since his childhood, he spent a good part of his life depressed and hospitalized. And then one day, he managed to talk about it with his sports coach who did what was necessary not to leave him with his suffering. He simply told her “you are a victim, you are not responsible, but you need to talk about it and get treatment. I will help you.”

Listening to him, I tell myself that only those who have experienced this can give an answer to my question. Or maybe you and I, who have been around victims of harassment. So, let’s listen and talk about it.

That Tuesday, I didn’t record much with my microphone, a little anyway, but I understand even better that this suffering is not inevitable. And you, what do you think? Give your opinion in the comments area: the most relevant ones will be read on the LFM airwaves this Friday.