Accused of 'Dérive Sectaire': Sabine, a Doula, on Her Police Questioning

Sabine is a private individual, identified here only by her first name. In September 2010 she was summoned by the judicial police in Montpellier over two postnatal-care training courses she had offered through a professional training organisation, and questioned for some two hours about suspected dérive sectaire and alleged illegal practice of midwifery. The questioning led to no judicial follow-up; the two courses in question, she recounts, had never even taken place. In this 2011 CICNS testimony she describes the experience and what she sees as a wider climate of suspicion surrounding doulas and home birth in France.

CICNS testimony. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 4 July 2011. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: Sabine has practised for around ten years the profession of birth companion, or doula. According to the association Doulas de France, a doula’s functions consist of informing, accompanying, and physically and morally supporting the mother and her entourage, and helping, if needed, the communication between the parents and the medical profession during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period. This accompaniment comes in addition to that of the doctor and the midwife.

Sabine is also a trainer, and in 2009 and 2010 she offered two training courses in Rebozo, a postnatal care of Mexican origin, at l’Artec, a professional training organisation. She had the surprise, in September 2010, of finding herself summoned by the judicial police of Montpellier.

[Sabine]: It was a message on the answering machine asking me to call back the judicial police of Montpellier. I did indeed reach this lady, who explained to me that a complaint had been lodged. It was a lady from the Ministry of Labour, concerning l’Artec, and that on that basis she was calling me, as I appeared in the catalogue.

[Sabine]: We took a lift and I had the impression — well, I laugh, but I wasn’t laughing at all that day — of passing down corridor after corridor after corridor. Then afterwards, it was in an office, and I was alone with her. It lasted about two hours. I felt a bit as if it were an interrogation, that is to say I didn’t have time to breathe, the questions came one after another non-stop for two hours, and I felt, how shall I put it, as if I were in court.

What comes back to me now is that each time, she would put it, and put it again, in the form of questions: but you’re not going to tell me that this isn’t cultish. You’re not going to tell me that this isn’t illegal practice. You’re not going to tell me that midwifery… you’re not going to tell me that accompanying women — that midwives can’t do that. I said to her: but madame, of course I’m not going to tell you that. Of course midwives also accompany women. It’s just another way of accompanying.

I understood very well that what she had summoned me over (this course around the Rebozo) she couldn’t have cared less about. She told me openly that she didn’t give a damn about it. She asked me an enormous number of questions about a training organisation I had worked for over ten years in Toulouse, which was also beside the point. She accused me repeatedly of illegal practice of midwifery. She brought out papers from the Conseil de l’Ordre des sages-femmes saying that from here to here, in the paragraph that had been written at l’Artec, all of that was illegal practice. What did I have to say about that? I had to justify myself over every word used in the text. As if these were activities that were not legal or not authorised, at any rate worthy of suspicion. So I was under suspicion simply for existing in this profession.

I find it no small thing to be summoned by the judicial police. I felt like a criminal. And above all, I think I found it unjust, with all the hours I have been able to give freely to parents. Well, in view of what I have been able to do, I found it really not right.

[Sabine]: Yes, it destabilised me. A few weeks afterwards, I was really very tired. I realised that it had been quite an ordeal after all. I said to myself: right, do I carry on or do I stop? Shouldn’t I stop what I’m doing and move on to something else, because I’ve had enough? I’ve had enough of justifying what I do. Especially since, on top of everything, the course at l’Artec (the two courses over which I was summoned) never took place. They never took place. I didn’t run them because there weren’t enough trainees.

Me, I’ve been doing this for ten years, but really, the existence of the association (Doulas de France, for example) well, of groupings like that, must go back seven or eight years. So, from the moment the profession was made public (which it is in countries other than France) there were an enormous number of attacks from the medical world, from the midwives’ world. Doulas were in the MIVILUDES report. On the internet, all sorts of detestable suspicions appear. We are potentially “cults”, since we get paid, since these are not free services. A witch-hunt, year-2000 version: we said to ourselves, there you go, it’s us, it’s falling on us. So it was rather treated with derision, along the lines of: we’re the wicked witches, we’re dangerous. Personally, that made me laugh until not long ago, but less and less. I find it a real shame.

As soon as something is outside the framework, in France, it’s a “cult”. So home birth is like the doulas: it’s “dérive sectaire” straightaway. A midwife friend I’ve known for years, who did 25 years of home births, the other day comes out and tells me, “in passing” so to speak, that she was held in police custody for 48 hours, with all her papers requisitioned, all of it over rumours in a village. Real accusations — there are none.

France is one of the most vulnerable European countries. France is one of the worst European countries for deaths at birth, even though we are the most medicalised country. No question is ever raised about over-medicalisation. We are not asking the right questions.

I recognise that in the end, over the years, there is a certain fatigue all the same. It’s difficult to rise above the debate when you are permanently dragged back into it by every possible means. For example, on the course (the first one) we also had a bibliography. So we were asked to withdraw a certain number of books, either because they talked about plants or because they were too spiritual. Going there, I was truly aware of all those who are troubled by the rumours, the so-called dérives sectaires, difference, in plenty of other fields. I find that serious. I really find it serious that in the year 2000 there should be such a closing of the heart, I want to say it.

[Interviewer]: Sabine’s interrogation had no judicial follow-up. That it was conducted essentially as a case for the prosecution is part of the increasingly assertive intimidation manoeuvres that the CICNS observes against spiritual, therapeutic and educational minorities.