Syndrome anxio-dépressif post-traumatique de Mila Wizman

Mila Wizman’s post-traumatic anxiety-depressive syndrome is the severe psychological aftermath of the rape she says she experienced, as described by a psychologist who examined her at the investigating judge’s request. The assessment presents her distress as both clinically significant and consistent with trauma: it links her inability to resist during the incident to a state of shock, and traces the continuing effects through sleep, body image, trust, and relationships. It also places that wound within a longer history of upheaval without treating earlier difficulties as evidence of a pre-existing mental disorder.

Assessment and Earlier History

Six months after the incident, the psychologist described Mila as clinically normal and without a medical pathology that could impair her judgment. She was reserved and introverted, and had difficulty expressing her feelings; the psychologist said this helped explain her reactive psychological collapse after the event. The assessment identified a very severe anxiety-depressive syndrome, including attacks of anxiety and weight gain, while finding no underlying mental abnormality.

The testimony situates this collapse against a childhood that Mila had described as happy until the terrorist attack at her school. She had been close to her father, but her parents’ divorce and her mother’s departure strained that bond’s wider family context. Her mother, Valérie Berdah, had moved to Brooklyn, where she formed a new household with a man from an Orthodox Jewish milieu and had another child. Mila had little contact with her; she felt blamed for joining her father in France and carried guilt after her mother told her that the assault would not have happened had she remained in the United States.

The attack at school had already disrupted Mila’s education: she missed her baccalaureate and was preparing to retake it as an independent candidate when the assault occurred. Her former teachers considered her intelligent but unsettled by the school attack and a hurried move to Israel that did not work out. The psychologist also described her difficult temperament as more pronounced in adolescence, following the attack, her mother’s turn toward stricter religious observance, and, especially, her mother’s departure, which Mila experienced as abandonment. She had seen several psychologists or psychiatrists. The account therefore presents a history of cumulative instability, while still distinguishing those earlier struggles from the acute syndrome attributed to the rape.

Trauma and the Court’s Interpretation

In describing the incident to the psychologist, Mila said she had followed Alexandre Farel without recognizing danger at first. Once they were in a room and he began to undress, she understood that she was in danger. She said she was afraid that calling out would lead him to kill her and believed that he was stronger than she was. Her account was that she acted compliant in the hope that the ordeal would pass more quickly and that she could escape. The psychologist interpreted this apparent submission as a defensive strategy under fear, not as willingness: Mila had expressed that she did not want sex, shown terror, and, in the assessment’s account, received no response to that refusal from Alexandre.

The evaluation connected this behavior to a state of traumatic shock that prevented her from defending herself. It also found that Mila had normal intelligence, was not especially suggestible or impressionable, and had received an ordinary level of sexual information. The psychologist did note that, at the time, her distress was compounded by a troubled situation and by alcohol and cannabis use. The conclusion was that Mila was credible and that the substantial effects she displayed were consistent with those commonly observed in rape victims. The testimony thus separates the question of her mental health from a claim that she was incapable of judgment: it describes a person without diagnosed mental abnormality whose circumstances and fear had nevertheless profoundly affected her ability to act.

Symptoms and Daily Consequences

Mila’s distress extended beyond the immediate incident. She had trouble falling asleep and woke during the night; nightmares replayed the assault, while intrusive flashes returned when she tried to read for pleasure or watch television. She felt contaminated and developed rituals of washing. Her sense of being dirty also led her to make herself vomit after eating. The account links these behaviors to an altered experience of her body rather than presenting them as isolated habits.

The assessment also records social and emotional consequences. Mila trusted no one and was afraid of men; her self-image had deteriorated, and she blamed herself for having gone with Alexandre. Her mood could shift into sudden crying. She had difficulty concentrating and maintaining friendships, explaining that her friends could not understand what she had been through. Recounting the events itself provoked tears, and she resented having to speak about them again. The need to testify and the distress attached to telling are therefore part of the syndrome’s consequences, not simply background to it.

Her earlier experience of sexual touching by the father of a friend, while she was staying overnight, also appears in the evaluation. Mila said that she had long been in denial about it. After the rape she says she experienced, she told boys who tried to court her that she had cervical cancer, although this was untrue, in order to keep them away. The psychologist describes this as part of a broader pattern of changed relations to her body and to intimacy, while maintaining that her personality was otherwise normal and adaptable despite acute suffering.

Intimacy, Identity, and Significance

The assessment records a marked inhibition around sex. Mila said she would not make love again until she was with a man she could truly trust, then added that she thought this might never happen. She had previously had a relationship lasting several months with a married man, but the account does not treat that history as a measure of consent in the assault. Instead, it shows how the event altered the terms on which she could imagine future intimacy: trust had become a prerequisite, and even that possibility seemed remote to her.

The psychologist noted that Mila had never attempted suicide, saying that her religion forbade it. She enjoyed films and visits to the Cinémathèque, took holidays in the mountains with her father, and liked nature; these details appear alongside, rather than cancelling, the severe symptoms. At the time of the assessment, she remained sensitive to her surroundings and capable of adapting, even as concentration, friendships, mood, and sexual confidence were impaired. The portrait resists reducing her to a diagnosis or to the assault alone.

Within the trial, the testimony makes the syndrome consequential in two related ways: it documents the lasting harm Mila reports, and it offers an explanation for why fear and shock could produce apparent compliance rather than physical resistance. The account also preserves the complexity of her prior life—family rupture, educational disruption, earlier trauma, and ordinary interests—without suggesting that any of those circumstances disprove her account. Her suffering is presented as both individual and legible to clinical observation, while the repeated difficulty of speaking about it underscores the distance between experiencing trauma and making it speakable in court.