A man, today aged 65, has never been able to access his mother’s identity because of the status “born under X”, which was not the case.
Le Monde with AFP
After three years of procedure, the State and the departmental council of the CANTAL were sentenced to pay respectively 15,000 euros and 5,000 euros to Jean-Pierre Vidal for the injury suffered to have believed, all his life, being Born under x, while it was not the case.
An administrative error cost him his childhood and he could never meet his mother. At age 65, Jean-Pierre Vidal pursued the state and the civilian department to obtain 400,000 euros of repair.
“It’s a satisfaction for condemnation, but dissatisfaction for repair. It is not up to the damage of a lifetime,” reacted his lawyer, Mr. Jacques Verdier, after having read The decision, in the evening of Monday, April 4th. The complainant announced his intention to appeal: “It was the sum that had been proposed to us at the beginning, in an amicable settlement. (…) I can not accept. There is still damage …”
Error at the DDASS
Born September 4, 1956 in Saint-Flour (Cantal), Mr Vidal was abandoned by his mother, with financial difficulties, and placed in a nanny. By the age of 8, he discovers that this nanny is not his organic mother. He then multiplies the host families, before being moved home and then end up on the street from 16 years old.
He tries several times to learn about the identity of his parents, but his interlocutors at the DDASS, ancestor of the ASE (social assistance to childhood), assure him that he was born under X and therefore does not have the right to access his file.
In 2019, an inspector intrigued by his file seized the National Council for Access to Personal Origins (CNAOP) and the answer falls: the identity of his biological mother is not covered by the secret. But it’s too late. His mother died of cancer years earlier, in 1996.
At the hearing, in early February, his lawyer had denounced a “fault”, pointed to “malevolence of a number of people from the administration”, and evoked “an outstanding prejudice”. The defenders of the State and Department – who recovered in the 1980s the competence of the protection of childhood – had recognized a liability but dismissed any malice, calling for precisely to evaluate this prejudice.