Novelist Adrien Borne writes of abuse he had buried for twenty years

The novelist and public-speaking trainer Adrien Borne has published «J'ai mis sur la porte un verrou» (JC Lattès), a book in which he revisits the sexual assaults he suffered at age 13 during a summer camp, memories he says he had buried for nearly twenty years, according to Le Temps.

Le Temps reports that Borne wrote the account in a few weeks following surgery for testicular cancer, which he describes in the book as another stigma left by the abuse. The newspaper calls the resulting text pudique et puissant — restrained and powerful.

In the interview, Borne argues that men who have survived sexual violence should join the same movement as women who have spoken out, rather than treat their experience as separate. He compares the spread of child sexual abuse to an epidemic, which he terms, according to Le Temps, the «peste bleue».

Le corps des enfants n'est pas un terrain de jeux, et c'est l'affaire de tous de les protéger.

Adrien Borne, to Le Temps

Le Temps notes that Borne had already spoken publicly about the assault ten years earlier, and that this new book returns to the question of why the subject remains so difficult to raise within families or among friends, and asks how much longer society will allow such abuse to continue unchecked.