« Vingt minutes d’action »

“Twenty minutes of action” is Jean Farel’s euphemistic description of the encounter at the center of the rape trial, and a phrase that crystallizes the conflict over how that encounter is understood. As it passes from the courtroom into public debate and then into the prosecutor’s closing argument, its casual measure of time is made to confront the lasting consequences described by Mila Wizman.

Jean Farel’s formulation

In his courtroom address, Jean argues that Alexandre has become a scapegoat in a climate of denunciation. He calls the case a “gray zone”: his son believed Mila wanted sex, he says, while she did not clearly say no. He points to the price Alexandre has already paid, including prison and the collapse of his educational and career prospects, and pleads that an intelligent, loving young man’s life should not be destroyed “for twenty minutes of action.” The expression compresses the encounter into a brief episode and places the emphasis on the damage to Alexandre’s future.

The phrase provokes an immediate confrontation. Adam Wizman rushes at Jean, saying that Mila is the only victim and that her life has been devastated by Jean’s son. After the presiding judge orders them apart, Adam directly challenges the wording, asking whether Jean really calls rape “twenty minutes of action.” He accuses him of pressuring the family, attempting to buy their silence, and refusing to take responsibility. Jean threatens to sue Adam for defamation; Adam answers that he is not afraid of him. The hearing is suspended.

From courtroom phrase to public dispute

Journalists present at the trial circulate Jean’s words on social media, where hundreds of comments appear within minutes. The next morning, a major newspaper publishes a manifesto signed by around thirty intellectuals, whose title rejects the phrase’s minimization: a rape is not twenty minutes of action, but a life destroyed—the victim’s.

Mila’s newly created blog gives the dispute a direct, personal form. Addressing Alexandre, she sets his account against hers: he has said that they did not live the same story and that she consented; she insists that she did not. She connects Jean’s phrase to the “gray zone” argument, challenging the idea that uncertainty about a refusal can erase responsibility. For Mila, the language does not neutrally describe an ambiguous encounter; it supplies a way for men to claim they misunderstood and move on without guilt or accountability.

The harm behind the measure of time

In her blog post, Mila recounts why she reported the assault and describes the questions asked at the police station, including questions about her clothing, whether she wanted sex, and whether she had experienced pleasure. She then describes going to hospital in tears for examinations, preventive HIV treatment, tests for sexually transmitted infections, and a morning-after pill. Her account makes the aftermath concrete: fear while awaiting test results, exposure during medical procedures, and her mother coming to collect her when she could barely walk.

The prosecutor’s closing address returns to the phrase while describing Mila’s continuing distress: nightmares, avoidance, and a long period when she struggled to leave home. The argument is not that twenty minutes literally measures the duration of a life sentence, but that a brief assault can have consequences that persist long after the act. The prosecutor recasts Jean’s language as an indictment of his failure to imagine Mila’s experience, ending with the claim that he has imposed “perpetuity in twenty minutes.”

Reversal and significance

The phrase changes force as it recurs. Jean uses it to reduce the encounter to a short episode and to stress the punishment Alexandre has suffered; Adam repeats it as an accusation, and the public manifesto and Mila’s account expose what the wording leaves out. In the prosecutor’s final use, the contrast between twenty minutes and a lifetime becomes the case’s central rhetorical reversal: time is no longer a measure of the act’s insignificance, but of the disparity between its duration and its consequences.

Its circulation also links the trial’s competing arenas. Spoken in court, repeated online, answered in Mila’s testimony, and transformed in the closing address, “twenty minutes of action” becomes a contested public expression rather than a private defense. The novel places its minimization beside the bodily, psychological, and social aftermath described by Mila, making the struggle over words part of the struggle over whose account of the event will be heard.