Hi, I saw that you said Adele’s dad was initially against her speaking up about the abuse. I’m just wondering if you can point me to the source, as I can’t seem to find it anywhere online:( A huge thank you in advance!
Adèle herself revealed it in the live interview with Mediapart. She explained how her father was against her speaking out about the whole story and so she wrote him a letter back in April to make him understand why she had decided to do so, and afterwards he changed his mind and supported her (he is one of the several people interviewed in the article written about Adèle).
She read the whole letter during the interview, it was extremely powerful and moving. I cannot gif it all because apart from being too long it’s very emotional and maybe the hardest thing to watch in an already hard to watch interview, but I can transcribe here what she read because I know a lot of people won’t watch a 1 hr long interview on such a sensitive topic but maybe they’re interested in knowing what she said. Please be advised that child abuse is mentioned so read at your own discretion.
I will try to explain things clearly. This matter goes back 18 years. If I waited this long to expose the events, it’s because of a number of things which made talking impossible for a long time, and today a whole lot of other things which make remaining silent insufferable. What made it impossible to speak out was, among other things, the fact that Christophe was someone nice, that he had done so much for me, and that without him I would be nothing. What I consider today to be clearly pedophilia and harassment, I forced myself at the time to think it was love.
How can I tell you? Deep inside me, I always knew that something wasn’t right, that it was not love, and when I went to his home I felt so dirty that I wanted to die. I found him disgusting, but i felt indebted to him because he did so much for me. He said incessantly to me, “It’s not the same with us, others wouldn’t be able to understand.” He would always go about things in the same way. He’d come close up to me, he’d kiss me and begin caressing me. I would get up, he would follow me, and I would end up sitting on the footrest which was so small he couldn’t come close to me. He didn’t want to look at things in the eyes. This is to say, he couldn’t slap me and physically force me, because in that case he wouldn’t have been able to avoid seeing himself for what he is. That’s to say, a 40 years old man, who abused a 12, 13 and 14 years old. Do you understand? It’s not out of respect for the child I was that he didn’t carry through with the act, it was because of fear of having to face himself.
I felt so dirty at the time, I had so much shame, that I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone. Silence is never without violence. Silence is an immense violence. You probably remember that time, of the violence I went through alone, and you probably remember too that at that time I cut off contacts with everyone. I left my agent, I stopped the casting sessions, I myself abandoned the idea of doing cinema. I decided to survive and go off on my own rather than staying. Who then came to see me to help me, for my wellbeing, for my career? All the kind consideration of Christophe didn’t prevent him from turning away from me and to pursue his political commitment in favor of children, his life in the world of cinema, as if nothing had happened. I disappeared, and with me disappeared the risk of being caught one day for his dirty affair. What a pity for him that one day, at the end of a party, I bumped again into Christel Baras, who subsequently cast me for ‘Water Lilies’, and I came back. Fragile, but I came back. As of that moment, and in large part thanks to meeting Céline (Sciamma), who is the most important encounter of my life and my career, sharpened by a desire for revenge, I became a blade, stronger, to the point of becoming what I am today. I’m talking of social status. I am socially powerful now, and Christophe has only become weaker. But this inversion of the balance of power is in itself insufficient to fight against the balance of power imprinted from early adolescence. Despite that, I still continued to be afraid. Concretely, that means the heart beating fast, the hands sweating, the thoughts becoming clouded. Fear, notably, during the rare times in which I’ve found myself in Christophe’s presence.
To tell you something else, what you thought was 18 years of silence, I crossed it feeling like being gagged, with lots of false truths that suited everyone. For example, very often I found myself in front of people, even people I love very much, who, without me speaking about anything concerning this matter, would say to me, “No, Christophe is a good person.” What I want to say is that, from what I’m telling you in part in this email, you can imagine that “a good person” is not exactly a proper description of Christophe. I want to tell you another thing. The remaining reasons for which I’ve made the decision to speak out are a documentary about Michael Jackson called ‘Leaving Neverland’, and also that I learned by chance that Christophe has launched a casting for a new film, whose main characters are called Chloé and Joseph, like in ‘The Devils’. Perhaps you view this detail as just a small matter, but to me it’s enormous. It means he completely denies my story. If I’m talking about it to Mediapart, after having envisaged other possibilities, it’s because the journalist is going to lead a thorough investigation. You seem to think that I’m trying to seek attention with these revelations, or that I’m trying to drag my psychoanalysis into the public arena. You’re missing the point. If I’m speaking out, it’s not to burn Christophe. It’s to put the world back on the right track, a world which is upside down in lies. If I’m speaking, it’s so the torturers stop strutting around and are forced to face things. If I’m speaking, it’s so that shame switches sides. If I’m speaking, it’s so that this exploitation of future children, of women, ceases, so that there is no longer the possibility of double-talk. You speak to me of forgiveness, but allow me ask you, has someone asked for forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? I understand your decision not to talk, it’s entirely your right. As for me, I think that if we do things together, we can do something really good, which would consist of looking clearly at our past, which came close to destroying me, destroying us, and to make it a gesture of love.
Forgiving Christophe is not my main concern. In any case, he’s the only one who could offer forgiveness to himself. My main concern is to live my life in the most alive manner as can be, with, around me, my family and the people I love, and who are themselves the most alive as can be.”
I’ve linked the interview already in the past, but since you asked for the source and in case you’re curious to know more, you can find the full interview HERE.
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