Lawyer at the Marseille Bar, Me Michel Amas is an angry man. For five years he has been traveling across France to assist parents in distressdont the children were placed. Here, in the home; there, with a host family. Today, 300,000 children are covered by Child Welfare (ASE) for a budget of 9 billion euros and 224,000 of them are placed. What he saw sent shivers down his spine.
The lawyer publishes a punchy book
He tells it frankly in a book which will be published next month by Editions du Panthéon and which he titled “Chronicles of ordinary contempt” (1). A punchy book. Fifty true stories. So many slices of life where we discover the horror experienced by destitute parents, and the situation of these children placed for one reason or another, because of frequent arguments between the parents, because of an accident of life, or because the social services have simply decided so.
Me Amas does not deny that these placements are sometimes necessary, because parents are suddenly unable to assume their responsibilities, but he deplores the fact that they are often carried out haphazardly, without any empathy.
Interview by Me Michel Amas
Les Nouvelles Publications: If you had to take stock of children placed in France, what would you say?
Michel Amas: The situation is deteriorating and getting worse and worse. In 60% of my files, two out of four placements are abusive. In Marseille as in Paris, there are foster children who prostitute themselves, because the homes do not take care of them. They are not up to par. However, to get subsidies, you have to generate placement. The decisions of juvenile judges are not applied. Social services do absolutely what they want and when they want. They are the ones who make the law. Judges do not deliver justice, they keep it for themselves.
What did you notice at the end of your tour of France of children in care?
For example, I discovered numerous sexual assaults and rapes during these placements. And when I write to the judge to complain, he doesn’t answer me. This is the only matter in the French judicial system where, when we approach the judge, he is not obliged to answer us. When I go to hearings, half the time, I only get the social services report which is mandatory the day before, or even the morning of the hearing. There is no respect for the principle of adversarial proceedings, a principle which is nevertheless found in all other matters of law. As a result, we don’t have time to discuss the content of this report with the client and above all we don’t have time to prepare our defense, and that’s everywhere in France… It’s as if we had to build a house with wallpaper, but without the walls!
In your book, do you criticize the lack of training of those who make the decisions that will affect the child’s future?
Yes, the opinion that counts is that of the specialized educator. He has twenty months of training. The conductor is him. However, I see every day that the staff of these social services are not trained to receive people’s pain.
Me Michel Amas is a lawyer at the Marseille bar. (Photo R. Poulain.)
So parents don’t understand the meaning of the decisions that are made?
No, they don’t understand. They are mad with rage. They become broken or hysterical and they are right. Even criminal justice is more supportive of its decisions, which are often heavy, than children’s justice. When a father is violent, we give him a red card and we don’t explain, we don’t support. We create encysted situations, which become explosive, with families torn apart, torn apart by placements rightly considered unfair.
Can you give us concrete cases of what you are experiencing?
A Dijon (Côte d’Or), for example, I take care of parents who both work in a supermarket. Social services will meet them at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. They can’t break free. As a result, they haven’t seen their child for a year. In Foix (Ariège), the judge placed two children in care two years ago. For a year, he did not take a single procedural action. In the file, there is nothing except my letters. We did not conduct parent-child therapy. We did not seek help from a “psychiatrist”.
A Toulon, a 17-year-old girl, a drug addict, became pregnant. She went to live with her grandmother. One fine day, eleven police officers broke down the door and took the child away. For several months, she has been placed in a home. When I say “Place her with her grandparents,” I am told: “It’s not in the child’s best interest!” » All this is happening here, in France. This is happening in Toulon, not in Indonesia! Elsewhere still, a 13-year-old girl was placed in care because her mother is depressed. In June, she called her mother to tell her that she was in a prostitution ring in Toulon. I contacted the magistrate. He only deigned to respond to me when I decided to write to the Minister of Justice.
A young girl from Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) went to give birth in Paris. Her baby was placed at birth. She can see him twice a month, once in Paris, once in Le Mans (Sarthe). It’s ubiquitous! And then there’s the worst. Since January, I have followed four coffins: two children and two parents, who committed suicide in Paris, in Evreux (Eure) and elsewhere…
The hearings are behind closed doors. Doesn’t this promote the publicity of the debates?
Yes, the hearings are behind closed doors. Journalists, the public and relatives are not allowed to attend. The day journalists enter these hearings, it will be the end of the omnipotence of social services. It’s war on all audiences. I have to deal with the arrogance of social services. It is the least cultured, the least qualified who are the most peremptory. It’s extremely rare violence.
Is this why you are going to try to have a bill submitted to the National Assembly this week?
Yes, with the help of several parliamentarians, including Marseillais Lionel Royer-Perreaut (Renaissance) who is leading the project, but I also have the support on the subject of deputies from other parties, on the right and on the left. I propose four urgent measures: the obligation for the children’s judge to respond to the parents’ requests within fifteen days by reasoned order, the establishment of an appeal of these decisions which must be decided within the month as in matters of instruction, the obligation to submit the social services report one month before the hearing and finally the introduction of a camera during the hearing to go out of closed session before the children’s judge. Our last fight as lawyers is not the death penalty, it is happening in the offices of children’s judges.
All this is much more violent than what I have ever experienced in court, in certain criminal cases. I have to date 1,800 files in all offices in France and on this total, I can say that I can count, in front of me, on two excellent judges in Marseille and on a third in Aix-en-Provence. They are good, they understand the seriousness of situations, because they have life history. They are not there on their first magistrate post. And they are not subservient to social services.
(1) “Chronicles of ordinary contempt”, by Michel Amas, Ed. du Panthéon, 250 pages.
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