Ambre began to suffer rape, blackmail and harassment at the age of 14. A path that led her to meet a pimp at 14 and 20, then to register on an « escort » website, while at the same time discovering abolitionism.
Now a philosophy student and bellydance teacher, Ambre gives a moving account of her experience. She will be opening season 2 of [the podcast] La Vie en Rouge in May [2025].
NB: The notes in blue were added during the translation to make them easier to understand
Thank you CAP international and Iroko for the translation.
I think that before the age of 14, I had a happy childhood, with parents who were there for me. I sometimes find it hard to understand how things could have turned out so badly… but a happy childhood is not an alibi for a lifetime!
In CM2 [last year of primary school], there were warning signs. A boy in my class was already very misogynistic towards girls, sexualising and belittling them. He classified us according to our physical appearance. We were all a bit ‘in love’. I played along. I was ten years old. He said to me, « When you’re older, you’ll be a real slut ». It really affected me.
I very quickly adopted the codes of femininity. I started wearing make-up when I was about eleven, and I started wearing little heels.
When I was twelve, I found myself chatting on MSN with a 25-year-old man. He asked me for underwear photos. A friend and I did it. We waited for his praiseworthy feedback, like the word of God. We didn’t realise that at 25, it’s serious to ask little girls to do that – it’s criminal child abuse.
Then my parents separated for a year and that was really hard for me. I became even more sexualised at school. At the end of the year, I learnt that my parents were getting back together and that we would be moving to another region a year later. It was a disaster. I began my last year of college (first part of high school) with the weight of this forthcoming move on my shoulders. I felt my father was responsible and selfish.
At the time, we didn’t discuss the risks at home.
My parents saw me wearing make-up and heels and were a bit uncomfortable, but that was all. Later, my mother told me that she didn’t see the harm, for her it was my freedom.
The year I turned 14, everything changed
There are still a lot of things I don’t understand, despite my therapies and all the work I’ve done. The person who lived through that year is like a stranger who is constantly pursuing me, haunting me. But now I can talk about it.
In this last year of secondary school, one day a boy came up to me and I gave him my number. My memories are pretty sketchy. The second time we saw each other, he took me to a forest and asked me for oral sex. I was naive and curious, but it wasn’t up to me and I didn’t see any way of saying no.
Afterwards, he told me that five of his friends were hiding around him. The boys send me messages. I’m not at all equipped to respond to five, six or seven boys who come to and ask me for sex. This started a sort of vicious circle at school where my reputation as a ‘whore’ grew. I was completely overwhelmed.
I’m like, ‘OK, this is what I absolutely have to be, this is what they expect of me’. My number started to go everywhere. I heard it was written on the walls in the neighbourhood – I’ll never know if it was true. Older men contact me. I don’t realise that I’m getting myself into something gloomy and sinister, buildings, cellars, forests. I systematically accept.
It’s as if saying no wasn’t even an option. The few times I tried, they’d say, « You’re mean, you said yes to the other guy. You know, it’s freedom, it’s sex, it doesn’t matter ». It horrifies me when I think of these teenagers who were already involved in aggressive behaviour.
I left a whole part of myself behind.
When I was little, people used to tell me I had a temper. Everything was crushed at that point. It destroyed me.
Texte on the image: “There are still many things I don’t understand, despite my therapy, despite all the work I’ve done. The person who lived through that year when I was 14 feels like a stranger who constantly follows me, who haunts me.”
Blackmail
One day, some boys in my class, whom I saw more or less as friends, stole my phone and gave it back to me without a memory card. It contained all my favourite photos, as well as some ‘compromising’ ones.
Four or five boys are starting to blackmail me. If you don’t agree to our demands, we’ll publish your photos on social networks. It was the early days of Facebook. By then, the violence had become so pervasive that I couldn’t even see the problem.
I’ll do it.
What happens with two of them is filmed. They bragged about it around the school. I was summoned by the CPE (Principal Education Advisor). The last thing I want is for the adults to find out. I’m so afraid of being seen as the guilty party that I keep it a secret. The adults tell me it’s serious and call my parents. I think: « This is terrible, I’m going to die ».
My mother was summoned. She says to me, « But did you love this boy?” She doesn’t understand at all that I have a reputation, that I’ve already had relationships with men that I didn’t want.
When I get back to the car, I start laughing nervously. I can’t stop, it’s horrible. My mother says to me: « You know, generations of women have fought to stop us doing things like this!” I feel like I’m the guilty one. To this day, I don’t know exactly what she knows.
My parents decided to lodge a rape complaint against these two boys, as it had been filmed. One of them was in my class. The CPE asked me if I wanted to change classes. I took it very badly, so I said no. As far as I know, the boy wasn’t asked. I saw him at the police station and then in class.
I can hear my lawyer fidgeting beside me. I’m very disassociated, it doesn’t make any sense. Why is this a big deal and not the rest of what I’m going through?
I fell in love with N., whom I would see again years later and who was already something of a pimp. He doesn’t want to go out with me « for real » because I have a reputation. I live in the hope of one day having a love affair with him.
He asked me to « do it with his mates who had never done it before, in buildings, cellars… ». He tells me « you’re my whore ». He humiliates me in front of the others. We were in a corridor and he said to me, « Come on, Ambre, open your legs ». I did it, laughing. I’m like a puppet. Once, he got a group of young boys together and said « so who wants to do her », in front of me. At the time, I laughed a lot. People thought I was crazy…
Ambre: I said I was a whore
At the end of the year, a boy who was a stalker but was well liked by the teachers grabbed me by the neck and said: « We’re lucky, we don’t need to rape anyone, we’ve got Amber ». It took me a while to remember that terrible sentence, which made me think: « I’m so incapable of saying no that guys think ‘it’s open bar' ».
I also meet older men with whom I have relationships. When men I don’t know approach me, I get very scared. I’ve also been offered prostitution, but I’ve managed to say no to that.
I just ‘played the game’ so much! There was no exchange of money, but I was already in this relationship where I was asked to do something, so I did it. I was under intense stress and dissociated all the time. I used to laugh and say, « I’m a happy whore ». People were shocked.
It was a cry for help, which nobody heard. One day, I’m in a cellar with an older boy who has a reputation as a lady-killer – more of a rapist – and another guy. The police arrived and they had weed on them. We were taken to the police station. I was grounded for a month.
What my parents saw was just the tip of the iceberg. They didn’t know that my year was punctuated by violence, rape and manipulation. They just filed a complaint and went to pick me up one day at the police station. They understood nothing.
Violence and pornography
The move has put a stop to things for me. But I continued to see N. – whom I was really in love with at the time – on holidays, when I went back to my home town.
He plays with me, makes me dream that « maybe one day we’ll be together », but my relationship with him is very violent. He was steeped in pornography, forced himself on me and filmed me, without me ever knowing what he was doing with the videos.
At P., I’ve changed completely, I’m wearing jogging bottoms and a big sweatshirt. I don’t want men to look at me any more, I don’t want to exist for them. On the other hand, when I go back to my town, I wear heels again because I have to please N.
I have a friend in P. who has always told me that she couldn’t believe it: « You told me straight away about what had happened to you, laughing and saying ‘I’m a whore’ ». She was very shocked.
A tumble for Ambre
I went from laughter to complete silence. I wanted to take it to my grave and never mention it to anyone again. My mental health began to plummet. I had been seeing a psychologist before moving house, and I was supposed to resume my treatment with a new one but I only wanted to talk to her.
I hooked up with another guy in my town who was in love with me. I’ve always admired him, because everyone used to say to him « you’re going out with a whore » and he’d say « I don’t care ». I see him as a protector, who gives me a reason to say no to other people. We stayed together for five years, and he witnessed my descent into hell. People say « Ambre, she’s changed, she’s settled down, she’s marriageable ».
Little by little, I’m realising what I’ve been through. I can’t have sex with my boyfriend any more, I start crying every time. I’m terrified to see a kind man who doesn’t force me.
The wall
After the baccalauréat, I entered hypokhâgne then khâgne [2-year preparatory courses for elite French higher education institutions], and returned to the Paris region. The pace was difficult and my mental health was worsening, even though the preparatory classes kept me in check. I started to self-harm. At the end of prep classes, my father left my mother. She was devastated and went into a deep depression.
I went to university and hit the wall.
I had « psychotic episodes ». Is this post-trauma? I’m having weird ideas and horrible bodily sensations. I feel like my organs are rotting, like I’m already dead. I started intensive psychiatric care, with my mother collapsing nearby.
With treatment comes the pain of the violence I’ve suffered. Before, I didn’t feel it. It’s like waking up after an anaesthetic, or when you’re in a lot of pain, you don’t feel it straight away.
At the beginning of my psychiatric journey, I was unable to talk about being fourteen. I didn’t tell the psychiatrists when I was hospitalised for the first time after a suicide attempt. But they don’t ask me about it either.
I spent two months in hospital, after which N. contacted me again.
I was 19 and overjoyed, thinking « at last we’re going to be able to live our story ». After my first encounter with N., I was devastated. In my notebook, I wondered why he was so violent.
It’s so bad for my mental health. But I think I’m managing. We see each other every week. I pay for his petrol, give him large sums of money. The sex is always more violent, always filmed, in his car. I don’t know what he did with the videos.
I find myself back where I was at 14, unable to say no. Every week, the same insults, the same gestures, to the point of nausea. I try to say that I want it to stop. He replies, « I know that deep down you want this. In life, I respect you, but in bed, you’re a real whore, I know it ». Each time, I write: « Tonight I say no », and I can’t manage it. When I say no, he puts his hand on my neck, it gets physically violent and then he says « so what, we didn’t want to, did we?”.
An evening of horror for Ambre
His fantasy, when he’s in a state of sadistic excitement, is « you want me to make you fuck other men, you’re my whore ». Until one horrifying evening. I agreed to see him with a friend of his in a remote flat. At first, there’s just one man, who introduces himself as a porn actor. I took a lot of Xanax that night to get there.
I have sex with him in front of N. who films me. It’s a moment of pure destruction. Up until then, N. had been feeling sorry for me because of what I’d been through at school and now he’s doing the same thing, saying: « Don’t worry, she’s very good at it, she’s been trained since she was 14 ». Seeing him film me, laughing while I’m going through an ordeal, it’s too much.
Then I’m in my underwear and they push me out onto the balcony to say hello to three or four boys who arrive. I have relations with all of them. I ask N. to stay with me, he’s my only anchor. I can see the disgust in his eyes, that he really thinks I’m shit. The sex – rape – with all these men is unprotected. One guy gives me a hard time. It’s really violent.
On the way back to the car, my floodgates open.. I start screaming and it drives N. crazy. He pulls me out of the car and tells me « I should never have taken you there, I thought you’d be capable ». I think he’s been paid off. He yells at me, tells me he’ll never love me. It’s horrible to hear, but at least I can hear him. Then he takes me in his arms.
That was the last time I saw him.
He drops me off two streets away from my house, I want to kill myself. I call my psychologist, who doesn’t answer, it’s 7 a.m. I go towards the bridge. I come across the police who ask me if I’m OK, I say no, I had an argument with my boyfriend. I have convulsive movements, they call the fire brigade, who take me to the emergency room.
Nothing mattered any more, I had nothing to lose.
At last, a speech that speaks to me
When I discovered abolitionism on social networks, I said to myself, « At last, something that speaks to me », and that goes some way to explaining what I went through when I was fourteen. I listen a lot, I watch, I devour testimonies. I feel less alone. It wasn’t long before the evening of horror. It was also part of my gradual desire to say no to N.
I realise that the mechanisms I experienced are comparable to so many stories of abused women.
I’m discovering this world with great enthusiasm and relief, but I feel destroyed and tell myself that it can’t be repaired. I’m on heavy treatment with antidepressants and a fairly strong neuroleptic.
At the time, I also understood that N. was a pimp and that tore my heart apart. Making the link between my situation and what I understood about prostitution, especially concerning N., whom I said I loved for all those years, was very painful. He had me in his grip.
After the black day, he called me one last time, then didn’t contact me again. I think he’s scared.
A clear path
When I see that I’m overdrawn, the path to prostitution is clear. That’s the path I was invited to take. I can’t remember when I signed up on an ‘escort’ site, it’s all so confusing for me. But it was horrible, there again.
Then I meet a man I had already known when I was 14 – another one! I have no control over the relationship, I abstain from sexual intercourse, I disconnect. I ask him to pay me, he agrees, and pays me a pittance, 20 euros here and there. I tell myself that I will never get out of this. Just like when I was 14, I don’t have the strength to tell him to go away now. As if he were crushing me.
What’s more, I was involved in activism, I had two lives. There were two Ambers. I was losing my lucidity in my suffering, in my fear too, of no longer having any money. I didn’t feel capable of working.
I met a few other men via escort websites. Each time it took me a week or two to get over it, it was so violent.
All the men, clients and others, would say to me in bed: « You like to be hit, to be insulted, you’re a whore ». My sexuality began with violence and dirty things. I never thought about my desire.
If I’d had access to the pro-sex work discourse when I was fourteen, I would have made it my own. In fact, that was what I was saying. But it was men who made me say that. It’s the discourse of the aggressors, pimps and ‘clients’, reversed and reused by the victims.
I filed a complaint against the other man, the one I was charging. I didn’t want to see him any more, he became threatening.
He wouldn’t give me anything but he still got what he wanted. One day, he said to me: « One last time and I’ll give you the money ». That was the last time.
I told him no and he couldn’t take it. He forced me to have oral sex and I had to run all over the flat to get away from him. He left. I managed to put up a body barrier. It did me a lot of good to see that I could do it.
It was October 2023. I realized it was rape. I’d always found it hard to admit. But this time I’d said no several times, it was more concrete, there had been physical coercion, where usually it’s just insistence, and I was in so much pain that I ended up giving in.
So one evening, I had a huge anxiety attack. I said to myself: this man is going to continue. I went to file a complaint at 11pm as I was leaving my dance class, totally compulsively. Today it’s been dropped, but I did it. Just in case it would help other girls.
Dying from within
The clients of the escort site? I remember one who drank, smoked and regressed. He started begging me not to leave, locked me in, I was having my period, there was blood everywhere, I ran away, he chased me on the phone… And I go back. It’s horrible to go back to a place where you know you’re going to die inside.
I ended up deleting this profile with the help of my psychologist. But prostitution is like a threat that always hangs over me, a shadow.
When I was 14 and I was raped, I identified a lot with survivors of prostitution. The same consumption, the same way of being an object, a body, orifices at their disposal. Money or no money, the only difference is that money gives you an extra weapon for coercion and blackmail.
I’ve always been artistic. I drew a lot. I played the piano. These were invaluable sources of consolation. At 14, I was writing songs. After that, dance gave me a lot of support and allowed me to see my body in a different light.
I’d just like to support myself in a way that doesn’t put me at risk, but enhances me and makes me exist, in a healthy and beautiful way. To be able to pay my rent, my shopping, with money from something I’m proud of and that doesn’t hurt me.
What are my dreams?
I would very much like to produce dance shows. On a more personal level, what I’m doing here is very powerful. It’s the first time I’ve told my whole story continuously. It pushes me to try to tame it, to take control of it, after it has remained silent, painful, intrinsically twisted and difficult for so long.
Talking is really strong.
Ambre will therefore be the first to appear in season 2 of La Vie en Rouge, due for release on 13 May. In the meantime, you can listen to season 1 again here: https://smartlink.ausha.co/la-vie-en-rouge/
You can also support the production of season 2 and the survivors’ voices by making a donation here: fundraising for La Vie en Rouge
