Le Monde: “In the very masculine world of the merchant navy, cases of harassment and sexual violence are slowly emerging”

In the very masculine world of the merchant navy, cases of harassment and sexual violence are slowly emerging

Via Le Monde, the French Newspaper of Record

June 29, 2022

By: By Marie-Béatrice Baudet and Julien Bouisson

Translated from French to English via Google Translate

INVESTIGATION In France as elsewhere, young women dare to testify, to evoke the agonizing camera of certain boats and the violence of hazing practices.

The photos of naked playmates, the salacious looks and the jokes of the style: "Ah, but you have no balls, you! What are you doing on board? , Suzanne – the first names of the French victims have been changed – supported them at first . Not really a choice. It was in 2008, the year of his 19th birthday. Student officer, she played big during her first embarkations. Her peers in the merchant navy, overwhelmingly male, would size her up and judge her. She regrets it today, but, yes, she took those obscenities for a long time without saying a word. And then, there was this night of stopover in Dakar, on March 20, 2013…

Suzanne is on call. She makes a last round, then goes to rest in her cabin, where a bell rings at the slightest incident. At 2 o'clock in the morning, feeling like a presence, she opens her eyes and discovers the face of the chief mechanic bent over hers. The sailor stinks of alcohol. He runs his hand over his thigh. Suzanne sits up, demands that he go away, but the man persists. “I ran off and managed to sow it in the corridors. Afterwards, I went back to my cabin and locked the door, even though we were asked not to, because it is dangerous in the event of a fire. »

Facing the World , Suzanne expresses herself at top speed; his words clash. Nine years have passed, but the young woman still seems panicked. His hands are shaking, his mouth twists with emotion. She chose to meet us in mid-May in Brest, facing the harbour, as close as possible to the boats and the sea, her childhood passions. For several months, she gave up sailing. "Recently, I tried my luck on a coastal ship, but I get mad at the slightest serious joke, and the posters of naked girls, I can't take it anymore..." In 2013, Suzanne did not dare to denounce the aggression of the chief engineer, but what she saw, heard and suffered during other crossings ended up convincing her to speak up, even if the rest of her career is now in jeopardy.

On March 7, 2022, this courageous woman, who had reached the rank of lieutenant, was summoned by the Brest gendarmerie, responsible for investigating, at the request of the prosecution, the "Genavir affair", as it is now called in the small circle of the French merchant navy, rarely accustomed to tongues wagging in this way. A 100% subsidiary of the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer), Genavir is the owner of its oceanographic fleet, made up of nine buildings, all of which are valuable floating laboratories for scientists. It was on board one of them that Suzanne was attacked, that famous night of 2013, in Dakar.

She is not the only victim to come forward. Jeanne, a young officer, also heard in March by the Brest gendarmerie, testifies to having repelled, in December 2016, the attacks of the same man, when he tried to kiss her by force. Other people could be auditioned on the actions of the mechanic, but also on the behavior of a captain whose looks deemed degrading, sexist reflections and silent arrivals at the bridge, at night, as soon as a woman took the watch , deeply distressed her subordinates, including Suzanne and Jeanne.

Theft of panties from the laundry

Even if the two incriminated sailors have been dismissed, the "Genavir affair" , partly revealed in December 2020 by the Mer et marine site , continues to agitate Ifremer and its shipping company, based in Brest. “It is clear that what happened was not well managed. The information should have come back more quickly ,” sighs Ifremer's Deputy Director General, Patrick Vincent, furious at the trauma inflicted and the catastrophic image sent back to the researchers welcomed on board. An alert system launched in September 2021, whose motto is "Detect, protect, support" , should help "never again!" »advocated by Eric Derrien, the general manager of Genavir. This 64-year-old former sailor, son of a gendarme, claims to be extra careful. "The merchant navy is a harsh environment, full of traditions, " he says. You have to be more vigilant than elsewhere. »

Let's set the scene for this closed door conducive to abuse: cramped workplace, private and professional life that merge, family estrangement, heavy hierarchy, male overrepresentation, night shifts, isolation, macho culture.

“In short, a boat has all the criteria to turn into a psychosocial risk factory , ” agrees the president of the French Association of Ship Captains, Pierre Blanchard. The 36-year-old captain says he realized the seriousness of the situation only a few years ago, when a lieutenant harassed by a stubborn sailor who came to scratch and whisper every night at his cabin door confided in him. , late. “She had preferred to keep quiet so as not to become the Turkish head of the crew. I did not see or know of any of this. Yet it was under my authority. I blame myself, because the young woman remains marked by this disastrous episode. »

Researchers have looked into the unique environment of navigation. In 2017, a document rich in information and entitled "Sociological study of psychosocial risks and physical, psychological or sexual violence in the merchant navy" was published.. Produced by the Center for Research on Social Ties (Cerlis), it confirms the dangers intrinsic to the sector: 35.5% of women and 10% of men questioned said they had been touched on board. Sexual abuse, in various forms, is recurrent, even trivialized: pornographic displays, inappropriate remarks about the physical, explicit proposals and, a small peculiarity of the environment, theft of underwear from the laundry. Panties and bras disappear quickly, relate Valérie, Viviane, Joséphine and Carine, four sailors cited in the study.

"Overall, the merchant navy is slow to become aware of the toxic virility that rages on its ships and the trauma it causes ," says sociologist Jasmina Stevanovic, author, with Angèle Grövel, of the Cerlis survey. According to him, the change would not be for now. No new substantive work has been undertaken since 2017, so deep is the culture of secrecy, according to the researcher. “Many companies have refused to distribute our questionnaires internally ,” says Ms. Stevanovic. Do you realize where we are starting from? It's omerta! » The saying repeated over and over again by the great family of the sea – “What happens on board stays on board” – doesn't that encourage it?

The “penis culture”

This is how it is: among sailors, esprit de corps is pushed to the limit. "It's all together that we face a storm, a fire and pirates, not to mention the nightmare of a collision at sea. Solidarity plays a full role" , insists Commander Blanchard. This sacred union is generally accompanied by a Pavlovian respect for the hierarchy. Who would allow themselves to question the authority of a commander or his deputy?

Coordinator of the Resource Center for psychological assistance at sea, located in Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique), Camille Jégo willingly evokes this "culture of the penis" , supposed to protect against all perils and linked to a strong male influence. Faced with inappropriate attitudes, many sailors prefer to look away and remain loyal to the collective rather than denounce them. “However, adds the clinical psychologist , the phone calls we receive prove that #metoo is moving the lines a little. Speech would gradually become free, in France and abroad.

Sweden led the way after the creation in 2018 of a Facebook group called “Lätta ankar” (“light anchors”), on which nearly 1,150 women shared their experiences of harassment. A young recruit recounts the aplomb of an officer ready to assure him that it was a "duty" to respond to the sexual advances of his superiors. Many of the participants in this Facebook group agreed to have their testimonies broadcast in a video on YouTube .

In the United States, the most prominent initiative goes to a man, Ryan Melogy, a former officer of the merchant navy, creator in 2020 of the blog "Maritime Legal Aid" . He welcomes without filter, in the first person and in capital letters, the stories of hundreds of victims. Having become a lawyer, Ryan Melogy is not leading this fight by chance: he himself was harassed, at the end of 2014, on the container ship Maersk-Idaho. Onboard the vessel, the Chief Mate groped him inside of a lifeboat during a drill. Ryan Melogy claims to have then witnessed the sexual harassment of two cadet by the same man and to have seen the man grab a cadet from behind, placing himself behind him to mimic sodomy. Disgusted, he reported the behavior to Maersk, the Danish shipping company that owns the ship, and sent Maersk a detailed report of the facts. But, three years later, to his great surprise, he discovers that the officer is still employed by the company and that he had even been promoted to Captain. “At the time, nobody wanted to hear me, neither the coast guard nor the American justice system, so I said to myself: 'Fuck you all!', I'm going to publish my story on the Net" , he told Le Monde. The former sailor filed a complaint. The procedure is underway.

In the fall of 2021, a young American, Hope Hicks, chose Ryan Melogy's blog to reveal the hell of her first boarding . It was June 2019. At the time, she was a student at the US Merchant Marine Academy (Usmma), the school of the American merchant navy, and joined the Alliance-Fairfax , a vehicle transport ship, owned by Maersk. She has to complete a four-month training course there and worries about being the only woman on the crew. In her complaint, filed with the State of New York on June 15, she reports the indecent remarks and sexist attitudes of an engineer officer, convinced that "the place of women is at home and not at sea".. The student claims to have been then pushed to drink, one evening, under the pressure of her colleagues until she lost consciousness. In the early morning, she wakes up naked on her bunk, her body covered in bruises. His sheets are stained with blood. Hope Hicks accuses the mechanic of raping her, but he denies any assault. The case, again, is in the hands of justice.

The chain of responsibilities

Asked by Le Monde , Maersk does not wish to comment on the current procedures. The Danish shipowner claims to do everything possible to ensure that such events can never happen again. After the account posted on the blog “Maritime Legal Aid” by Hope Hicks, under the pseudonym Midshipman-X, Maersk had suspended five of its employees. For its part, the Usmma has decided to stop the internships at sea this year. In mid-June, Copenhagen ordered the country's maritime authorities to carry out a major investigation into working conditions on board ships flying the Danish flag.

Even if the denunciations multiply in certain countries, nothing is won. Sociologist Jasmina Stevanovic is also cautious in saying that a great #metoo of the seas is not yet on the agenda. How can a victim assaulted in the middle of the ocean denounce his attacker and file a complaint? "We feel trapped in a junk box from which it is impossible to escape and act" , laments Suzanne . Alert a trusted person? Yes, but communications by satellite telephone being operated from the bridge, where an officer is constantly watching, all confidentiality is compromised. Send an email ? Whose ? Many employees recruited by manning agencies– intermediaries responsible for assembling crews on board ships – have no direct contact with shipping companies. What is more, the majority of the latter do not yet have “harassment referents” who can be reached 24 hours a day.

Another question: how to quickly trace the chain of responsibilities after a sexual assault? “In principle, in this case, the competent court is that of the flag” , explains Mr. Philippe Valent, criminal lawyer at the Paris Bar . An investigation relating to a woman assaulted on a ship flying the Panamanian flag should, in principle, be entrusted to the authorities of this country, but, nuance M e Valent, there are exceptions linked to the nationalities of the victim and the perpetrator: thus , a French woman can go to court in her country, which is impossible if she is English or Spanish. When the jurisdictions of several States overlap, the procedures become even more complex.

One certainty: according to this lawyer, plaintiffs and plaintiffs from poor countries where the police are slow and corrupt are the worst off. "The major difficulty for offenses committed on boats is to gather evidence and allow victims to disembark and file a complaint as soon as possible ," said Mr. Valent .

Markus Schildhauer, a retired German pastor, is one of the few to have collected testimonies from men who were victims of sexual harassment when he officiated in a sailors' home in Alexandria, Egypt. "There are many Filipinos among them who are afraid of being accused of being homosexual, so they don't tell anyone, even less to their employers for fear of not being rehired ," says the cleric. And, besides , to whom should they address themselves? At Manning's agency ? To the shipowner? To the charterer? They don't know it and when a company agrees to send a psychologist, do you think the sailor will tell him that he can't take it anymore and that he wants to stop working? »

This question of business nipped in the bud has enraged a French trade unionist, Jean-Philippe Chateil, for several years. This retired chief mechanic has just given up his mandate as secretary general of the Federation of Merchant Marine Officers CGT, but he continues to sound the alarm, in France and in international bodies. “Impunity must end,” he warns. The victims have no interest in going to complain to the armaments inclined to slow down and stifle the stories. Sailors are citizens like any other, they have to call the cops when a sexual assault takes place. »

“Self-segregation and endogamy”

The inertia of the medium is astonishing, indeed. Let's go back to the case of the young American student Hope Hicks, attacked in 2019. Three years earlier, in 2016, following several anonymous testimonies denouncing acts of sexual harassment, on-board training courses had already been suspended by the Usmma. The Danish company Maersk then issued a statement saying that these elements were "a subject of immediate concern" . A relative “immediate” , judging by what happened next to Hope Hicks…

In France, the preliminary investigation carried out by the gendarmerie of Brest on the reaction of Genavir after the first alerts of Suzanne and Jeanne also raises the question of possible professional discrimination against them. In other words, they would have "paid" for having dared to speak. The minutes of the hearing, of which Le Monde was made aware, thus refer to the data collected by the labor inspectorate, careful that the two complainants are not penalized by their revelations. "They were, it's obvious ," says Léa Scarpel, of the European Association against violence against women at work.

The lawyer accompanies the officers from the start and knows their case well. “Suzanne , she explains, was assigned to smaller ships so as not to meet one of the sailors she had denounced. She was also demoted to less desirable positions. Jeanne, although well noted, went on a permanent contract later than other of her colleagues. The Brest court will soon deliver its judgment on all of these elements which never cease to amaze.

A final twist surprises Suzanne and Jeanne. The commander implicated by several women, fired by Genavir, has just been recruited by Louis Dreyfus Armateurs. He now works in the quality, health, safety and environment department, which oversees, among other missions, staff safety and training. Why did you hire him in this department, even if it is true that he has not been sentenced to date? “He strongly disputes the facts with which he has been accused” , replies the company, while insisting on its attachment to the protection of its employees.

“In the merchant navy, in France as elsewhere, it is better not to neglect the importance of self-segregation and endogamy, warns a former officer. At home, What 's going to help Truc because they were from the same class at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Maritime [ENSM] , the heiress of “Hydro”. This is a classic pattern between former Grandes Ecoles. »

Raise the stakes

It is precisely within the walls of the “Hydro” that the “culture of the penis” seems to have taken root. The School of Hydrography, created in 1571, in Marseilles, by King Charles IX, is, after the College of France, the oldest higher education school in the country. It took until 1973 for a woman to make her entrance there, perhaps through a misunderstanding. The candidate was called Alix Daujat. His mixed first name made the correctors believe that he was a man. When she showed up to class, a teacher allegedly asked her what she was doing there. Today, women represent 16% of ENSM students.

Located in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) in a nave-shaped building, the ENSM has three other branches located in Marseille, Nantes and Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine). Even if, since 1998, hazing has become a criminal offense in France , the rites, sanctuarized by the student offices, persist in many large schools, including the ENSM. A “bural” elected by the students on each of the four sites is responsible for keeping the “traditions” alive. As long as they are not "baptized" by Neptune during a festive ceremony, the new ones are called "pilots", an abbreviation of the term "pilotins", which formerly designated the young sailors embarked on merchant ships.

At the beginning of the autumn, the entrants are "sold at auction" in front of an assembly where it is not uncommon to meet professionals and professors. Officially, it is a question of placing the pilot under the protection of a benevolent sponsor. “In any case, this is not what happened to me , ignites Emilie, who passed through Marseille. At my class auction, there were only drunk old guys who wanted to buy the prettiest chick. Suzanne remembers being "sold" for 600 euros, the price offered by a fifth-year student from Le Havre, proud to have won all the pilot boats that time . “We were twelve out of 120 and, before the party, we had been advised to be dressed as sexy as possible. »It is quite easy to find images of these evenings, some of which have nothing to envy to Roman orgies.

The ENSM recalls that these festivities take place outside the school walls and that it is therefore not responsible for them. Nevertheless, the discomfort is obvious. The scandal that occurred at the American Naval Academy and the discovery, in January 2022, of a link on the Le Havre "bural" site referring to an escort-girl - officially a "hack" against which a handrail was filed – have sounded the commotion. A training program dedicated to preventing and combating gender-based and sexual violence has been set up and an investigation entrusted to an external agency was launched on 27 June to assess the extent of the phenomenon. The various "burals" were also asked to remove from their websites "any photo of a discriminatory and degrading nature" ..

"Avoidance Strategies"

Appointed head of the ENSM in November 2019, Caroline Grégoire knew her roadmap: to register the establishment in the standards of higher education and research schools. His arrival in this institution of nearly 1,200 students was a small revolution. First woman to lead the school in four hundred and fifty years, the engineer did not master the codes of the merchant navy. When she arrives in Le Havre, there is no equality referent, no charter for festive events, no code of ethics and good conduct. It is now fixed.

"However, there remains within the Hydro a schoolboy side, maintained under the coat with the support of the medium and the old" , analyzes the one who announced her imminent departure from the direction, as the transplant did not taken. A schoolboy side? Is she thinking, for example, of the "bitch" taken up in chorus after each verse of the song Fanchon , a classic sung during multiple evenings? Or those teachers who advise girls to tie up their hair and avoid any provocative outfit when they go to sea? “Put on a turtleneck, close your bruises all the way up, avoid dresses… What the hell have I heard of this advice! “ , Storm Jeanne, from the class of 2012 in Le Havre.

Caroline, a 34-year-old mechanic, did not do the Hydro, but she joined a vocational maritime school. According to her, everything is done, from the first years of study, to put women off boarding. She still resents some of her teachers who maintained "a permanent cock competition" , she says, before telling an episode that she has never forgotten...

A class of twenty-five students. Caroline and Lisa are the only two daughters. A mechanics teacher challenges them: “You girls cook, so you know what temperature oil boils at…” No, they reply, taken aback. A boy then asks them what they are for. Another intervenes: “As long as they suck on board, there is no problem. Everyone burst out laughing, even the teacher, Caroline recalls, convinced that things will evolve in the right direction when there are more women on board . That's far from being the case. Genavir has twenty-six female sailors out of 276 crew members, and Maersk 350 out of 12,000. Globally, women represent approximately 1% of sailors on board.

While waiting for better days, they develop “avoidance strategies” on board  : strict clothing, no alcohol when an aperitif is organized, locked cabin… “You have to protect yourself well. A boat is a pressure cooker in which the guys train among themselves , confides Caroline, her voice broken.  In the morning, some sailors take their breakfast in underwear and bare-chested. In the afternoon, you go down to the machine, where it's really bawdy, and in the evening you will quickly lock yourself in your cabin. Hello stress…”

Chloé, 31, says she has built up “an armor” . “I'm no longer the same as on land, I constantly control my body, because I'm afraid that things will get out of hand when I'm at the PC machines. Others choose to embark on NGO boats, where the atmosphere, more feminized, reassures them, but they are less well paid there . From time to time, they have to return to a trading ship where, they are aware, anything can happen.