FROM THE NORM TO THE MARGIN

The real victims.

Last night I got news about the circumstances of the death of my nineteen year old student; femicide. Another one. I feel nauseous. The numbers are going to get bigger, everyone is going to talk about it. Everyone will be outraged. And then nothing will happen.

You don't belittle when you love. You don't insult when you love. You don't threaten when you love. You don't beat when you love. You don't kill when you love. If you can do all this for love, it is only for love of yourself, not for love of the other.

All these animals who are not even ashamed to hide behind excuses. It will never be their fault, their responsibility. If they cry, it is not about what they have done, about their victims. They only know how to cry about themselves. They should no longer live in society. What they did once, they will do again. Who should we protect in a state of law? The guilty? The innocent victims?

Don't talk to me about extenuating circumstances. There can only be explanations for the murders so that we can make sense of the horror. There are no extenuating circumstances, only aggravating ones. Killing a person is still murder. We all know it is a crime and have known it since we were children. So to take the life of one's spouse is a heinous crime. Why in France are we not able to say: if you kill another human being you automatically do so many years in prison. If you have aggravating circumstances you get so many more. If you kill so many people, you get so many years for each life destroyed. 

What happens in reality is: you kill one or more people, the sentences are not cumulative, so go ahead and do it. You had a hard life, the person in front of you provoked you: don't worry we will take that into account, you will get a reduced sentence.

I will never understand that causing the death of a human being in our country is not punished by an automatic minimum prison sentence. I don't understand how we can feel that someone who has committed murder can be excused. Do you really think I never wanted to kill anyone? Why don't I do it? Because I have too much to lose. Because I've learned to respect the rules. Because my family has always explained to me that I can't behave as monstrously as the person who committed the atrocity.

Victims are victims for life and no one has given them extenuating circumstances. Especially not their torturer. So I'm sorry, but thinking about how the perpetrators might feel, imagining what they will go through as a result of their conviction, doesn't concern me anymore. Everyone has to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences that follow.

It is with all these detours, these falsely human attitudes of compassion for the guilty that we encourage some to disrespect the lives of other humans.

It makes me want to vomit when I think of the fear my former student must have felt. At nineteen you shouldn't be stabbed to death by the person you think you love. Nineteen-year-olds shouldn't feel like it's the end and that no one can come and save them. At nineteen you should not breathe your last with the face of your killer above you, the one you trusted.

I am against the death penalty. If we kill, we are no better off. I am for the protection of society in the face of potential danger. It is the first step that costs. If an individual kills once, there is no guarantee that he will not do it again. So let's lock these people up, to protect ourselves. Let's make them support themselves. Let's not take care of them. Let's really take care of the victims throughout their lives.

Let's not mistake the victim. Let's stop training culprits.

Let's create people who are responsible for their lives, their choices, their actions.