Stefania Rousselle Vedène, France.
GRENOBLE, France - “Sexual assistance is about allowing a disabled person who can’t access sexuality in a satisfying way to reconnect with the body,” said Pascale Ribes, who in 2011 founded the Disabilities and Sexualities Group, an association defending sexual surrogates in France.
“Prostitution is a fake debate; the goals are different,” Ms. Ribes said.
Healthy Fantasies
In her sexual fantasies, she is a fit and impetuous blonde who dominates her male partners. In real life, she is a virgin who relies on an electric wheelchair, her body touched only by home care aides and medical personnel.“A disabled person is seen as a child,” said the woman in the wheelchair, Laetitia Rebord, 31. “So inevitably, child and sex don’t go together.” A translator and teacher, she has a genetic spinal muscular atrophy that has left her entirely paralyzed, except for her left thumb and her facial muscles.
Ms. Rebord, who says she feels physical sensation acutely, has looked for sexual relationships through friends of friends and men on dating sites and even with male escorts. But her disability has scared many away, and she says she is now ready to pay for sex in Switzerland or Germany, where so-called sexual surrogates are legal.