The squatters took on the appearance of drug traffickers for Cecilia. Initially, the drug dealers invaded a garage in the basement of his building and not his apartment, located in the Belle-de-Mai neighbourhood of Marseille (13), in 2022.”My neighbour was kidnapped at gunpoint in her home», he confides Provence . This mother took courage in both hands and went to meet the drug dealers, “to try to calm things down“. The French teacher then notices some signs made of black paint on her front door. She also receives threats and begins to get scared.
An abandonment of institutions
The women’s rights information center she is in contact with tells him to leave the place. «Who wouldn’t be afraid? Since I had my little girl with me, it was obvious that I couldn’t stay in the apartment», he becomes alarmed BFMTV . Cécilia is a single mother with a 5-year-old daughter and fears for her daughter’s safety. At the same time, she became the owner of this apartment only a year ago. He had undertaken the work when the ceiling threatened to collapse. He decides to leave anyway and thinks he has solved the problem by leaving the place but the squatters took advantage of his absence to move into his accommodation. Cécilia is overwhelmed by expenses, rents another accommodation and finds herself paying a rent of 700 euros a month, her credit with monthly instalments of 300 euros and co-ownership costs, and this for two years.
She says she is isolated and deplores the lack of support from public authorities. “It’s not so much the drug dealers I blame. There is an issue behind public authorities, the availability of law enforcement“, he declares. Cécilia, exhausted, is currently on sick leave. The forty-year-old filed a complaint at the police station for “entry into residential premises through maneuvers, threats, assaults or coercion and fraudulent occupation» but does not have the means to pay the bailiff’s fees. She tried to return to her accommodation a few months after starting the squat, but was punched in the jaw by a squatter and had some of her teeth knocked out.
Isolation of single mothers
Contacted by Le FigaroCécilia did not want to express herself in more detail on the subject. “I decided to stop responding to interview requests, I had bad experiences with the media“, he justifies himself. However, he explains, today there are no longer any illegal squatters in the area. “I will not return to this accommodation, I have suffered a trauma that makes it impossible“, he declares. He will return to complete the work and change the lock but that’s all. For her the problem derives above all from”the impoverishment of the popular neighborhoods, the general abandonment of the Belle-de-Mai neighborhood e the isolation of single mothers “. She is also co-president of the Marseille branch of the Single Mothers Movement. “Single mothers they are a target because they are fragile and vulnerable. Drug dealers would never attack a woman with a partner or husband. I am the example of this. Just like my neighbor…”, he confides Provence.
Cécilia is not the only owner who does not blame the occupants but the institutions. A few months ago, another owner from Bordeaux saw her apartment occupied illegally. He wanted to sell his house but on the day he decided to show it, the key no longer fit in the lock. The squatters had changed the lock. “Justice is not ineffective, rather the law is aberrantcomplaint. I don’t blame the squatters, I understand that they have no other solution.»