Parole de l’enfant et parole à l’enfant en justice

The children’s “words” have acquired inasmuch importance as, in judicial affairs of intra-family sexual abuse, there are, most of the time, neither evidence nor confession but instead contradictory versions. The author shows how, in the Outreau case, the children’s words have not been really listened to because conditions for a real understanding by adults – laymen or justice professionals – were missing. In this article, analysing the treatment of these words allows to emphasize the necessary consideration of numerous data such as the circumstances of disclosing the facts, the family context, the characteristics of the narrative and the evolution of potential symptoms. But the controversial concept of credibility, revealing the social ambivalence and the difficulty of applying the doubt, must remain the responsibility of the judges and not of the clinical experts. The latter must, starting from elements collected in a specific relation, describe the psychological processes functioning in a child, between fantasy and reality