Aged nine, she was walking home with candy and food for a goldfish she’d won at her school fair when a man stopped her in the steps to her flat and raped her.
Now 39, Adelaide Bon, from Paris tells her story in a heartbreaking book called the Little Girl on the Ice Floe. The book, which was met with acclaim in France upon its publication is now translated in English.
In the book, the actress and author explains she suffered from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for twenty years, most of which were spent unaware of her diagnosis. The author told MailOnline what it took to finally put her trauma past her.
Bon’s carefree childhood was shattered by an Italian burglar Giovanni Costa, known by police forces under the nickname ‘the electrician.’ Costa turned out to also be a serial rapist.
At 80, Costa, who was caught in 2012, is serving a 18-year prison sentence for raping nine girls aged between six and thirteen and for assaulting 18 others between 1990 and 2003.
Adelaide Bon, 39, a French actress and author, revealed that she was sexually assaulted at nine years old in a book that was met with critical acclaim in her country. The book is now available in the UK
After he attacked her, Bon, now 39, told her parents what happened after the assault and filed a report with French police. On the outside, she seemed fine, but as the book reveals, she was anything but.
She lived haunted by her assault for years. The memories of Costa followed her through her teens and early twenties, where she suffered from bulimia, insecurities and a wish to take her own life which translated into actual self-harm.
Bon makes a point of writing a gruesomely detailed account of her sufferings. The writer explains that she aimed to be as precise as possible with her words.
Language and writing were instrumental to her survival, and it helped her heal.
The Little Girl on the Ice Floe, a Memoir, by Adelaide Bon, MacLehose Press, £16.99 is out now
‘Writing allowed me to connect back to my language, to find the exact words to say things in a precise manner,’ she told MailOnline.
‘It helped me get my feet back on solid ground.’
In the book, which follows Bon from childhood to adulthood, she recounts slapping herself forcefully, bashing her hands against walls, and contemplating throwing herself out of a seventh floor window, as well as suffering from eating disorders and from issues with sexual intimacy.
Throughout the pages, Bon the author alternates between the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘she’ in order to write the story. Bon said this was because the grown woman was unable to recognise herself in the the child, teenager and young woman she writes about in the first chapters.
Adelaide (pictured) told MailOnline feminism made her brave and helped her heal from her trauma. She lived with PTSD for twenty years
‘I didn’t belong to myself,’ she said, adding that instead, she felt she ‘belonged to Costa.’
‘I saw myself not as a subject but as an object, and writing helped me understand that.’
Now mother to a little boy, and having managed to put the hurt behind her, Bon wants to help others.
It took ‘years and years’ of therapy for Bon to finally heal.
‘I was extremely lucky, but I want to show others that you can escape your trauma and repair yourself, even though it is a part of my life and is instrumental to I am today
‘I will never forget the bad, but it doesn’t affect me anymore.’
Through therapy, the author realised she suffered from dissociation for years: a feeling of intense alienation in which people lose their sense of self, of where they are and what they are doing.
Writing helped her to reconnect with her self, and theater helped her to reconnect her mind to her body, she explained.
The author (pictured) said writing helped her heal, as well as ‘years and years’ of therapy. She now considers herself ‘repaired’
She also benefited from feminist literature.
‘Feminism helped me understand that my story didn’t belong to me, that my intimacy was not mine, that it was forced on me,’ she said.
‘It made me brave, feminism gives you courage when you don’t have any, it gives you sisters, it makes you stronger,’ she added.
Her attacker spent some years in the UK before his 2012 conviction, but this is not why Bon wrote or had the book translated. ‘My story is just a detail,’ she said.
‘I didn’t want to just tell my story, I wanted to explain what proceedings were operating within my story, but I hope this will help many many more victims than “just” the ones from Giovanni Costa,’ she explained.
After her harrowing account of survive sexual assault at the age of nine was published, Adelaide (pictured) said she hoped it would be a ‘tool’ for victims of sexual assault
Adelaide (pictured) said she was flooded with letters from victims and their families following the publication of her book
Bon absolutely thinks more could be done to prevent sexual assaults in France, ‘as nothing is being done at all.’
In France, criminal cases of sexual assaults are based on the same laws as for adult cases of sexual assault, which means that the victim has to prove they did not give consent or were forced – by violent, surprise or constraint – to engage in sexual activity.
Bon wishes to see this law changed to reflect the reality of child abuse.
‘It seems obvious to me that there can’t be any consent regarding a child and an adult,’ she explained.
‘A child will always say yes to an adult,’ she added.
‘I wanted this book to be a tool they could use to rebuild themselves and to understand what they were going through,’ she explained.
‘I also wanted it to be a wake-up call for judges, lawyers and care providers so that they could understand the situation a bit better’
And it seems the book had the effect she was hoping for.
‘I was flooded with letters from victims, their partners, their parents,’ Bon said.
‘One judge wrote to say he had never understood why some victims of sexual assault looked disinterested in their own experience, as if they didn’t care, but that her book help him see through that.’
The Little Girl on the Ice Floe, a Memoir, by Adelaide Bon, MacLehose Press, £16.99 is out now.