Miriam Weissman's interrogation transcript

Mila Wizman’s interrogation record is the confidential police document in which she describes reporting that Alexandre Farel raped her. Its significance lies not only in the allegations it records, but in the way it passes from a hidden, legally sensitive file into Claire Farel’s private reckoning and, later, a public struggle over how Mila’s testimony should be understood. The account preserves the pressure of the interview itself: questions, tears, pauses, and the physical details of the assault become part of the record, while the document’s circulation is restricted and its destruction cannot erase what Claire has read.

Identity and Confidential Status

The record is the procès-verbal of Mila’s police interview. Léo Farel obtains it from a police officer he had coached in boxing and offers it to Claire and Jean Farel, who have not yet been able to speak with their son. Léo stresses that no one must know they have seen it—not even their lawyer—because possessing it could expose them to an accusation of violating the secrecy of the investigation. He describes it as strictly confidential and says that even Mila herself does not have a copy. That restriction makes the document a precarious object: it brings the family close to evidence they are not entitled to possess, while giving them access to an account that sharply unsettles their assumptions.

Claire reads the first part quickly, passing over Mila’s description of the evening, then slows at the section about the alleged assault. The record therefore shapes the scene through a change in attention: what had begun as an account of the night becomes, for Claire, an encounter with the details of what Mila says happened. The document is not presented as a neutral summary detached from its making. Its question-and-answer form retains traces of the interview’s difficulty, including the interviewer’s prompts and the notations that Mila is crying or struggling to continue.

The Account of the Assault

In the passage Claire reads, Mila says that she kept telling herself not to worry, while in fact she was terrified because Alexandre had said he had a knife. She says he stood, opened his trousers, exposed himself, took her head by the nape, and put his penis in her mouth. She describes him pulling her hair and speaking to her abusively. When asked to repeat what he said, Mila replies that she does not know if she can; the interviewer offers to let her write it instead. The transcript records her answer, her crying, and an interruption of the interview for several minutes.

The record also captures a later distinction in Mila’s account: she says she did not see a knife, but insists that Alexandre forced her to perform the sexual act and raped her. In court, when asked whether he held her head, she answers yes and says he pulled hard and caused her pain. These details do not make the account an omniscient finding of fact; they establish what Mila reported and the bodily force she described. The contrast between her fear of the knife, which she says she never saw, and her insistence on the force she experienced remains part of the contested evidentiary picture.

Claire’s Reading and the Destruction of the File

Claire reads the testimony at Léo’s home, shut in the kitchen and struggling to control her anxiety as she feels that her life has fallen into chaos. The transcript’s account overwhelms her. She puts it down, catches her breath, and continues; after reading it all the way through, she remains motionless for a long time, stunned by the scale of the disaster. When Jean and Léo enter, they find her prostrate, her eyes vacant. Léo immediately takes the document from her hands and burns it in the sink.

Claire’s response is left deliberately unresolved in one crucial respect. She says that her son’s life is ruined, without clarifying whether she means Alexandre’s or Mila’s. The ambiguity keeps two consequences present at once: the threat of ruin for her family and the harm described by the person who made the accusation. The burning disposes of the physical copy, but it does not undo Claire’s reading or settle what happened. The record has already altered the terms on which the family can think and speak about the case.

From Confidential Testimony to Public Controversy

The record’s contents continue to matter beyond Claire’s private encounter with them. The assault is later discussed in court, where Alexandre denies that Mila was unwilling and says he believed she was participating and enjoying herself. When asked whether she might have been frozen with shock, he rejects that possibility. The courtroom exchange turns the disagreement into a direct conflict between his interpretation of her behavior and the account of force documented in her interview.

The case also moves rapidly into public circulation. After Alexandre’s detention becomes news, Jean Farel’s lawyer disputes the accusation publicly, characterizing the night as an ordinary encounter between two consenting people. Journalists subsequently circulate Jean’s remarks from court, prompting hundreds of comments within minutes. The next morning, a major newspaper publishes a manifesto signed by about thirty intellectuals, rejecting the reduction of rape to a short episode and emphasizing the victim’s destroyed life. Mila, meanwhile, posts a text on a newly created blog addressed directly to Alexandre. She contrasts their accounts, rejects the suggestion that she consented, and challenges the phrase “gray zone” as a justification for men to evade responsibility. These public statements are not the interrogation record itself, but they show how the account’s central dispute—what Mila said happened, and whether her consent was present—travels from a confidential interview into the courtroom and the media.

Narrative Significance

The record is a hinge between private evidence and public argument. Its first readers in the Farel family encounter an account they cannot openly possess or comfortably absorb; later, the same central facts become part of a trial and a media storm in which the meaning of consent is contested. The document’s form matters: the questions, pauses, tears, and physical descriptions preserve the difficulty of speaking, rather than smoothing the interview into a seamless statement. Yet the transcript cannot by itself resolve the opposing accounts. Its force in the narrative comes from holding Mila’s reported fear and pain alongside the denials and interpretations that challenge her, while showing how quickly a confidential testimony can become the center of a public conflict.