Parenthood, Convictions and Children's Rights in the MIVILUDES 2009 Report

Parenthood, Convictions and Children’s Rights in the MIVILUDES 2009 Report

By CICNS

In this section of its report, the MIVILUDES proposes to study the case law relating to parenthood when disputes arise between parents holding convictions: “It is when a conflict arises between them, either precisely on the question of the transmission of convictions and notably on religious practice, or in the more general framework of a conflict linked to separation, that the judge is called upon to set new bounds to the right of the parents, and that he is then led to examine, at the request of one or both parents, this particular right linked to the exercise of parental authority”.

Taking into consideration the context of the anti-cult fight is indispensable for appreciating this case law, particularly in France.

The first aspect of this context concerns the climate of suspicion generated around the spiritual minorities (or, more generally, the groups qualified as “cults”). Unless one believes that magistrates are impervious to social pressure, it is obvious that the recurrent psychosis fed around the “cults” influences the statements of magistrates and the decisions of judges. If it is granted that many of them will know how to extract themselves from this political and media pressure, the fact remains that many others will be won over by the dominant thinking on the subject. It is particularly significant that, in almost all the extracts from judicial reasoning offered by the MIVILUDES, the groups concerned are designated as “cults”. Yet the magistrates cannot be unaware that this term has no legal meaning, that its sociological definition (in the sense of Max Weber notably) is obsolete, but that this term has nevertheless acquired an extremely pejorative connotation, since it is synonymous with criminal group in the public mind, thanks notably to the persevering action of the MILS and then the MIVILUDES to discredit the spiritual minorities. Which is to say that the magistrates, unbeknownst to themselves (thus potentially unconscious of the effects of a dominant thinking) or willingly, use a designation which de facto and a priori discredits the groups targeted. One must be naive to imagine that this power of discredit would have no influence on judicial decisions. And if one must grant the rapporteurs that they have reproduced examples of case law where a spouse’s membership of a spiritual group is not considered an aggravating circumstance in a dispute, it would nevertheless be very useful to evaluate the weight of the “MIVILUDES-style” anti-cult fight on judicial decisions. All the more so as Georges Fenech spares no effort to diffuse his ideological convictions on the anti-cult fight at every level of the magistracy.

The second aspect is a consequence of the first. The rapporteurs’ study makes a complete impasse on the psychology of spouses engaging in separation proceedings, on the violence this separation can entail and, in consequence, on the disrespectful arguments that can be used to recover custody of the children at any cost. Our inquiries have demonstrated that the anti-cult fight was welcomed by certain parents as a windfall for winning their case by accusing their spouse of belonging to a “cult”. The French context lent itself very well to this, at one period (see our interview with Maître Biro), and if the judicial apparatus has managed to right the ship somewhat in this domain, this accusation still has an immediate effect casting suspicion on the person targeted. See our report on three women, among dozens of cases, testifying to their experience of divorce in an anti-cult context.

The third aspect concerns the role played by the anti-cult associations, privileged partners of the MIVILUDES. Christian Paturel (formerly a lawyer) was able to observe that these associations frequently envenomed the dispute between two spouses to justify their anti-cult crusade.

It is not surprising that the MIVILUDES passed over this deleterious climate in silence, for it is responsible for it. It is its stock in trade, and when the rapporteurs mention, for one particular precedent, “that the judge refers explicitly to the public echo unfavourable to the practices of this movement and to its judicial setbacks, as well as to the rupture of relations between the mother and the child, to characterise the fault”, one would have to be naive to believe that the MIVILUDES is unaware of being the artisan of this famous “unfavourable public echo”.

This hypocrisy is the trademark of the French anti-cult policy. It reaches its peak when the rapporteurs, commenting on a case which mentions the 1996 parliamentary report on the cults, specify: “As a preliminary, one must cite here, the better to set it aside from the outset, the bad use sometimes made by the judge of the notion of a ‘dangerous cult movement’. (…) But above all, it is regrettable that judges have ventured onto this terrain, at once slippery and sterile, for on the one hand, what is the legitimacy of the judge for awarding a certificate of harmlessness or endorsing the dangerousness of a movement, relying moreover on a parliamentary report without normative force, and on the other hand this single element without explanations could not justify the interference the judge might consider he must make with the rights of the parents in case of ‘danger’”. In a communiqué of 27 June 2005, Georges Fenech, backed by Philippe Vuilque and Jean-Pierre Brard, opposing Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s circular of 27 May 2005, considered the parliamentary list of cults as “a reference for the work of prevention and of fighting against dérives sectaires”. The same people who encouraged the indiscriminate use of this list, once the rumour was well established and almost indelible, suddenly adopt a posture respectful of democratic rules. If Georges Fenech is so convinced of the obsolescence of this list, he who moreover communicates insistently to the Mayors so that they rally to his anti-cult doxa, why did he not telephone the Mayor of Boulogne-sur-mer, who has just banned a meeting on the basis of the parliamentary report (see our communiqué on this subject)?

On page 195, the rapporteurs encourage magistrates to make better use of the provisions of the CRC (International Convention on the Rights of the Child), ratified by France in 1990, evoking in particular the development and education of the child. It is not insignificant that at the moment the rapporteurs’ recommendations come out, the bankruptcy of our educational system is so flagrant that it has led to an Estates General on school security held on 7 and 8 April at the Sorbonne (Le Monde). Yet the action of the MIVILUDES, by discrediting all the alternative educational experiences of the “cults”, is a stakeholder in the bankruptcy of this educational system which cruelly lacks new ideas (see in particular our article on the regulation of violence).

On page 215, the rapporteurs evoke the office of the administrative judge by describing a case of accreditation refused to a nursery assistant because she belonged to the Aumist religion. The rapporteurs comment: ”(…) it is the responsibility of the State to guarantee that the placement of the child will entail no unjustified encroachment on the liberties of which he is, even as a minor, the holder”. The question that comes to mind is the following: in our secular country, would the consideration of religious membership intervene in the same conditions in the case of a person belonging to the Catholic Church (and an assiduous practitioner), a Church of which one cannot say that it is not making headlines today? In the same way, the rapporteurs evoke a child adoption refused because the parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses. The same question can be posed.

Two other points deserve to be mentioned on this study of case law.

The first is methodological. The politics of suspicion conducted by the MIVILUDES cannot burden itself with comparative studies. The study of the cases presented omits any comparative, quantitative and qualitative approach with regard to disputes over parenthood outside a context where convictions intervene. This study therefore brings no proof of the social-scourge thesis defended by the MIVILUDES.

Which brings us to the second point. What has become of the repetitive assertions of Georges Fenech and others, proclaiming that 80,000 children are in danger in the cults in France? No doubt a thorough study of the case law must have made it possible to appreciate the irresponsibility of such statements for those who may for a time have given them credit. These figures, hammered without respite through the intermediary of the media (without any critical spirit on their part, need one recall?), are absent from the present report. This proven tactic is the same as the one used for the 1996 parliamentary report. First, distil the rumour, our era of “buzz” lends itself to it, and once it is part of the pensée unique, return to a “posture” more respectful of the rules of law and democracy. Fooled is he who wishes to be. This hypocritical attitude is notably useful for keeping up appearances towards the international bodies little seduced by the French anti-cult excesses.

In the conclusion of this section, the MIVILUDES evokes its “ambition of contributing to improving the quality of decisions relating to the exercise of the prerogatives of parental authority, notably by the recall of the great principles”. The position of the MIVILUDES is too partial to permit any progress, including at the judicial level, in the direction of a better understanding and accompaniment of the emergence of the new forms of spirituality. The legal expertise present in this study (at last a real expertise in a MIVILUDES report! one is tempted to say) is subordinated to a political approach of exclusion and contempt which ends, as we have noted on several occasions, in turning French society against a part of itself.

If the magistrates want to understand the cult problematic, rather than following the “training courses” of the MIVILUDES, we invite them to consult our site.

Read our general commentary on the 2009 report