The cycle of violence
IDSanté is an association specializing in health education. It was created in 2016, in French Guiana, with the belief that developing prevention for health is a way of helping to reduce social inequalities in this matter.
The association develops preventive health actions for the population, particularly vulnerable groups. Taking into account the local context, it creates or supports actions aimed at developing the autonomy in health and the power to act of the inhabitants, in Guyana and Occitanie.
IDSanté commissioned The Ink Link to produce an illustrated project on domestic violence in French Guiana, to help untrained people and social workers understand its mechanisms.
Domestic violence is a complicated mechanism. It's hard for the untrained eye to understand why women put up with such violence, or go back and forth with their abuser.
Break-ups take place in several stages that repeat themselves like a circle: women leave their violent partner the first time, then return to his side. This pattern is repeated several times before women are able to break off permanently. In situations of domestic violence, it's difficult for the victim to understand what's happening to her: sometimes it's calm, sometimes it's hell.
This makes social work difficult in some cases, if the support workers don't understand the behavior of the women they support.
In response, IDSanté asked The Ink Link to create an illustrated medium explaining this mechanism.
Damien Roudeau was chosen to create the illustrations, his realistic style making each emotion strong and memorable for the reader.
The Ink Link worked on a specific scenario, featuring a fairly classic story of a cycle of violence.
The story ends with advice for female victims and those who support them. For example, on how to lodge a complaint or which contacts to use.
The document was translated into Brazilian to make it easily accessible on both sides of the river.
The story was then adapted into an animated film so that it could be shown to people with reading difficulties. These videos have been adapted into several languages.
