France: Finally, an age of consent
Child-protection activists have for decades demanded that France institute an official age of consent, said Solène Cordier in Le Monde. Now the National Assembly is at long last drawing up a law that will classify sexual relations with a child under age 15 as statutory rape. It’s already illegal for an adult to have sex with a minor, but the perpetrator can only be charged with rape if prosecutors can prove the use of “violence, coercion, threat, or surprise.” That loophole has complicated attempts to prosecute alleged predators, who can defend themselves by claiming the sex was consensual. The campaign to change the law has reached critical mass in recent months thanks to best-selling memoirs from high-profile childabuse victims and their family members. In Consent, publisher Vanessa Springora revealed how she was groomed for sex from age 14 by writer Gabriel Matzneff, then 50; in The Big Family, attorney Camille Kouchner detailed the alleged rape of her twin brother by their stepfather, public intellectual Olivier Duhamel. The books sparked an online movement in which tens of thousands of people shared similar stories on social media.
For incestuous relationships, the age of consent will be set at 18, said Alexandra Saviana in Marianne. France abolished the crime of incest after the French Revolution, regarding it as a moralistic relic of the Catholic Church. Today, while “you can’t marry your father or sister,” close blood relatives can have consensual sexual relationships. But the “explosion of the Duhamel affair” has changed French thinking on incest and the power that an older family member can wield over a young relation.
It took a series of monstrous crimes to get France to this point, said Chris Jewers in the Daily Mail (U.K.). In 2017, a 28-year-old man who sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl was charged only with sexual abuse of a minor, not rape, because prosecutors had no evidence of coercion. France’s top court is currently hearing the case of a 25-year-old woman, known only as “Julie,” who says she was groomed at age 13 by a Parisian firefighter named Pierre and then repeatedly raped by him and his colleagues. A lower court classified the crime as sexual assault—again, not rape—implying there was consent because Julie had been dating one of the men.
Some activists believe the draft law isn’t tough enough, said Marie Campistron in Le Parisien. Lawmakers are considering a “Romeo and Juliet clause,” an exception for teenage lovers whose age gap is five years or less. “The 17-and-a-half-year-old young man who has a relationship with a 14-and-a-half-year-old girl must not become a criminal when he turns 18,” said Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti. But activists argue that young adults often prey on young teens, and that the proposed exception will effectively lower the age of consent to 13. Still, having an age of consent at all is a huge step for France. “Until now, the idea that a 6-year-old could consent to a sexual act was validated by the Criminal Code,” says lawyer and activist Pascal Cussigh. Soon, that “absurdity” will be no more.