À l'origine de cet article, il y a une demande du BJSN, The British Journal for School Nursing, alerté par le colloque international sur les jeux d'évanouissement qu'organisa l'Apéas en automne 2009 à Paris.
Il est révélateur que cet article, pourtant mis en ligne assez rapidement, n'ait suscité pratiquement aucune réaction. En tout cas apparente. Les médias continuèrent à spéculer de manière invraisemblable sur les motifs de ces étranges morts d'enfants et d'adolescents qui n'avaient jamais donné l'impression de vouloir mourir. Bien au contraire, en général.
Quelques articles (moins d'une dizaine) surgirent à propos du 'Chocking Game', considéré comme une invention états-unienne susceptible de contaminer les paisibles cours d'école britanniques. Sans dramatiser.
Toutefois les enquêtes de coroner eurent tendance sinon à devenir explicites, du moins à mettre en garde sur le danger qu'il y a à se mettre un lien autour du cou et à exercer une pression.
Among all its names in the USA, TCG (The Choking Game) is the one the CDCs use in their 2008 report, although, no strictly speaking choking (internal obstruction of the airway) occurs.
In France they call it "le jeu du foulard", although, curiously, scarves are rarely used.
In the UK, about ten years ago, quite a time before it became news in France, Canada and USA, the medias, quoting players or making it up, mentioned it as the "The Fainting Game" (TFG) and, although fainting, in solo playing, most certainly means dying, this denomination is the most appropriate*.
*Mais cette pratique était connue depuis bien longtemps, comme en témoigne un article publié dans le British Medical Jornal (BMJ) en août 1951. Deux formes de manipulation sont évoquées, appelées The Mess Trick and the Fainting Lark, qui correspondent au rêve indien et au jeu du foulard. L'article valut deux réactions à ses auteurs. Dans la seconde un médecin rapporte une curieuse observation : un oedème consécutif à l'ablation d'une tumeur cancéreuse fut résorbé par l'application réitérée du Mess Trick.
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| Eton College |
Fifteen years ago it was in the news..
.. for some weeks in the UK, simply because Eton College pupils confessed playing, as one of them had died hanging himself. Thereafter not a word anymore. Did the practice actually fall into oblivion ? Or was it safer to pretend it never existed ? But while adult minds refused bothering about TFG, kids kept on playing and dying here and there, as press titles show : "Hanging tragedy", "Death of student shrouded in mystery", "Boy dies after 'ligature accident'", "Girl, 10, is found hanged in bedroom", "Teenage TV actor found hanging", "Parents think 'prank' killed son ", "Childish experiment gone tragically wrong", etc. They use dressing-gown cords, school ties, judo belts, dog leads tied to bunk beds, showers, door pegs, wardrobe frames... Coroners record narrative, open, misadventure or accidental verdicts. Very carefully, without a note left by victims so young, coroners require a proof beyond all doubt to register a suicide verdict. For the medias, on the contrary, this is the alternative to accident, the delicate point being to find out a motive : bullying, Internet suicide chatroom, impulse, cell phone row, anything will do, futile or not, and even if the victim is described as a happy-go-lucky kid. Last but not least, devastated parents are left, for the rest of their life, with a haunting "why ?"
But what is the TCG if not a game ?
Despite its long history, this bizarre practice is still an enigma for most people, including medical and law enforcement staff. It basically consists in external compression of the airway, whether on sternum or neck, whether by hand (team) or ligature (solo) in order to restrict oxygen flow to the brain (hypoxia). If pressed, the carotid artery nerve ganglion may provoke cardiac arrhythmia causing cardiac arrest. If not, the pressure on the jugular veins prevents venous blood return from the brain, gradually causing passive congestion and diminishing oxygen supply to the brain. This results in depressed respiration and unpredictable unconsciousness, turning useless any escape mechanism. The collapse of the body increases tension on the ligature and the pressure obstruction of the carotid arteries prevents blood flow to the brain (anoxia) while pressure obstruction of the larynx cuts off air flow to the lungs, producing irreversible asphyxia, all hope of meaningful recovery being lost with clinical brain death. Were the victim "saved" before death, complications may include persistent vegetative coma, cerebral edema (brain swelling), and herniation of the brain.Why do they submit their body to such a violence ?
Those who practice in teams say they get a "high" when, thanks to their pals, they recover from unconsciousness. Some mention, with usually poor words, visual and auditive hallucinations that the names given to TFG are supposed to express : cosmos, black out, space monkey, high riser, speed dreaming...
Among individuals saved from death, and scientists who experimented on themselves, some have retained no recollection of what happened, others were conscious of sudden loss of motion and heavy legs, flashes of light, brilliant circles of colours, accompanied by hissing in the ears. Who is concerned ?
Children and adolescents, especially the 12-16 group, of all social classes and kinds, the daredevils as well as the very sensible.
When they do it in teams, alternatively strangulating and being strangulated, the main risk is a cardiac arrest. Without help in the following minutes – the others may panic and run away – it can be fatal. In any case, and although they are invisible, brain injuries do exist, irreversible. Those who practice secretly are tragically only discovered when they die from accidental hanging.
How do kids learn it, who teaches them ?
On the school yard or in judo or jujitsu classes or in summer camps. Some, after playing in teams, practice on their own. On the topic of special effects, they think that, unlike drugs, it doesn't leave marks and is free of charge.
Some discover alone and by chance the strange sensation produced by pressing on their neck and explore it.
Addiction is possible*.
Some discover alone and by chance the strange sensation produced by pressing on their neck and explore it.
Addiction is possible*.
What are the signs one is doing it ?
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| Patrick Gaudette - Mal de tête |
Polls (France, May 2007)
They show that, in a sample of more than a thousand persons representative of the French population aged +15, 6% of the parents who have heard of TFG consider that their children must have practiced once. 5% declare knowing children or adolescents who have been injured or died of that practice and nearly half of the persons who practiced TFG or have seen others doing it, were not conscious of the risk.
Deaths by hanging are too quickly assimilated to suicides or axphyxiophilia. A study (1995) on 136 youngsters deceased by strangulation, hanging and suffocation in UK3 questions without answering the exact cause of death of 21 children aged from 8 to 14. In a Scottish study (1998), 6 deaths by hanging are classified as suicides only because they are not accidental4. A study (1994) by the OPCS, identifying 136 children under 15 years of age, concludes that "the prevention of hanging in the group of older boys needs further exploration"5. A Canadian study in 2001 was the first one to mention strangulation games among youngsters in school bathrooms, using towel dispensers6. Following the death of 4 children and the coma of a fifth one, not only the existence of this practice was acknowledged but the decision was taken to suppress cloth towel dispensers in Canadian schools.
No conscience of danger
In 2012, IPSOS published the conclusions of a survey done at the request of the French Charity APEAS (Association de parents d'enfants accidentés par strangulation). The APEAS chairwoman, Françoise Cochet, said that the difference between harmful risk-related activities and TFG is precisely the fact adolescents have no conscience of the danger. In respect of preventive actions, her recommendation is not to fear the subject. Here also information is invaluable.
The Guilty
Quatre ans après la publication de cet article dans le BJSN, ITV a diffusé un drame en trois partie, The Guilty ("Les coupables"). Un petit garçon disparaît au cours d'une nuit de fête de village. Sa mère ne le trouve pas dans son lit le matin. Avec la pédophilie, c'est le pire des cauchemars pour les parents. L'enquête n'aboutit à rien. Cinq ans plus tard des ouvriers qui creusent pour réparer une canalisation découvrent une boîte. Le corps de l'enfant est là, soigneusement enveloppé d'une couverture. Cette fiction illustre excellement comment, de non-dit en trop-dit, l'ignorance en fait de jeu du foulard détruit irrémédiablement la vie d'une communauté villageoise.
* L'addiction (d'où le sous-titre de ce blog, l'hypoxiphilie) est désormais attestée et étudiée conjointement avec d'autres addictions, dites "sans substance" ou comportementales.
