PARIS — For many of her testimony, Célia Viale saved her composure. She recounted the agonizing two-day wait to be taught that her mom was amongst 86 people killed in a terrorist attack. She described a “whirlwind” of visits to the morgue, the police station and a psychologist.
But it surely was not till she described her wrestle to get compensated for her loss that her anger crammed the courtroom. “I’m not thought-about a sufferer,” Ms. Viale, 28, informed the judges. “Evidently having your mom crushed by a 19-ton truck in an assault just isn’t a cause for a traumatic grief.”
For the previous a number of weeks, witnesses, law enforcement officials and psychological specialists have been known as to the stand in the continuing trial of the 2016 attack in Nice, France. Legal professionals will make their closing arguments beginning subsequent week, and by mid-December, a verdict is anticipated as to who was culpable for the assault, although the perpetrator was killed on the time.
As a substitute, the trial was supposed to convey a measure of consolation, readability and catharsis for the victims and assist them and the authorities come to phrases with why a deeply disturbed Tunisian immigrant whom prosecutors described as self-radicalized plowed a truck by way of crowds celebrating Bastille Day.
However one theme stood out repeatedly within the testimonies from practically 300 survivors and family members: resentment and anguish at what many described as a cumbersome and harrowing course of to acquire compensation from France’s official victims’ fund.
Standing feverishly on the bar, survivors and family members of victims questioned how a lot a life was price. Questioned the classifications assessing ranges of struggling. Denounced medical examinations as degrading.
In a country deeply traumatized by years of terrorist attacks, together with these on the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and other sites in and around Paris in 2015, their grievances have highlighted an unbridgeable hole between infinite sorrow and a treatment the place cash stands for what can’t be purchased.
“They need to estimate the ache, the loss,” Esteban Peña Villagrán, who helped folks hit by the truck proper after the assault, mentioned of the victims’ fund. “However there’s no worth for that.”
Not like many international locations, France has a state-funded compensation program, the Guarantee Fund for Victims of Terrorist Acts and Other Offenses, which gives full reparation overlaying bodily, psychological and financial damages. Compensation is devised as an expression of nationwide solidarity and doesn’t block potential litigation, as was the case in the United States for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults.
France’s fund was created in 1986, however gained prominence solely within the mid-2010s, when the nation skilled a collection of Islamist terrorist assaults that killed a whole bunch of individuals and left hundreds extra injured or bereaved. Since 2015, over 6,500 folks have been compensated, greater than within the previous three many years mixed, according to the fund.
“There’s been a paradigm shift,” mentioned Julien Rencki, the fund’s common director. The group considerably elevated its funds and workers to deal with the inflow of victims and facilitate the compensation procedures.
“An awesome effort,” Mr. Rencki mentioned.
That isn’t how Caroline Villani noticed it.
Ms. Villani, 50, a nurse, misplaced her son, her mom and her brother within the Good assault. She nonetheless has a video of her mom dancing on the well-known seaside Promenade des Anglais, seconds earlier than the truck hit her.
Ms. Villani was compensated for these losses, however she mentioned the fund continued to disclaim her reparations for the demise of her mom’s longtime accomplice, arguing that as a result of they weren’t married, he couldn’t be thought-about a member of the family.
“He took my kids on trip, he taught them to ski,” Ms. Villani mentioned. “Our household just isn’t acknowledged as an entire.”
Many victims on the trials of the Good and Paris assaults have complained concerning the burdensome process to show damages, product of paperwork — well being certificates, police experiences, testimonies from kinfolk — and medical examinations.
Ms. Viale mentioned she didn’t perceive why a fund-commissioned psychologist decided that the lack of her mom was not thought-about “pathological grief.” She now worries that eczema flare-ups that left her bedridden for months after the assault is not going to be acknowledged as a byproduct of her shock.
“That is extremely paradoxical,” Ms. Viale, who’s the vp of a victims’ support group, informed the courtroom final month. “We wish to not be victims, however we get the impression that we should show that we are literally feeling very dangerous.”
A couple of days after Ms. Viale, one other girl took the stand. Margaux Dariste misplaced her 2-year-old daughter and had written her a letter that she learn, in tears, to the judges.
“I used to be stunned, after your demise, to must endure psychological skilled assessments,” she mentioned, “for a compensation that has no worth.”
She continued, “As a result of, to me, your life was priceless.”
Mr. Rencki mentioned that as a result of the fund supplied for full compensation, it should assess the extent of damages as greatest it could. The group has printed a comprehensive guide itemizing practically 30 damages eligible for compensation. Tables give benchmark quantities based mostly on standards together with age, household ties and stage of harm.
The psychological struggling ensuing from the demise of a 17-year-old? Thirty-five thousand euros, or about $35,000. A 65-year-old survivor with a stage of psychological and bodily harm evaluated at 70 %? €168,000.
Compensations based mostly on varied damages can add up, and a remaining fee is obtainable to survivors and bereaved members of the family when their well being is taken into account stabilized, which may take years.
“It’s true that it’s cumbersome,” Mr. Rencki mentioned of the method, including that it additionally aimed to forestall false victims from falling by way of the cracks. In 2018, a lady who posed as a sufferer of the 2015 Paris assaults and pocketed as much as €20,000 in compensation was sentenced to a six-month prison term.
A number of victims in contrast the fund with an insurance coverage firm attempting to discourage folks from in search of giant payouts. “The compensation presents have been characterised by a cost-cautious method,” mentioned Olivia Chalus, a lawyer who represents greater than 100 of the two,500 dwelling victims of the Good assault.
Mr. Rencki mentioned that the fund had an infinite funds and that 70 % of the victims of the Good assault had already accepted a remaining payout. He pointed to a 2019 report by the European Commission that praised the French system’s potential to rapidly ship emergency funds to assist with preliminary prices associated to burials or hospitalization.
Two weeks after the assault, Ms. Villani acquired €25,000. Extra allowances adopted, serving to her take care of her youngest son, who was severely injured within the assault.
However she mentioned she would have preferred extra human contact, fairly than solely seeing her checking account topped up and receiving dry letters detailing the payouts.
“We’re nothing however names and figures and recordsdata,” she mentioned.
Mathieu Delahousse, a French reporter who printed “The Price of Our Tears,” a e book on the compensation system for terrorism victims, mentioned the fund had did not arrange a sympathetic course of, as a substitute utilizing a bureaucratic method that appears unsuited to the tragic circumstances.
The impersonal language utilized in some letters to victims was “totally violent,” he mentioned.
The difficulty, nonetheless, could boil all the way down to a extra trivial side: cash.
As a result of the French system is predicated solely on monetary compensation, frustrations abound as to what may be thought-about truthful reparation.
In his e book, Mr. Delahousse describes scenes of haggling during which attorneys interesting compensation presents in courtroom argue bitterly with the fund’s counsel concerning the victims’ anticipated lack of earnings or their diploma of intimacy with a deceased individual.
Ms. Viale mentioned she didn’t need to “earn money off my mom,” however fairly true recognition of her trauma — which, within the present system, can solely translate into more cash.
Mr. Rencki acknowledged that “compensation won’t ever measure up” to the victims’ struggling. He mentioned France ought to devise new types of reparations, past funds, and pointed to a tutoring program for traumatized kids that the fund is growing.
Cash, Ms. Viale mentioned, is however a “golden bandage.”
