PARIS (AP) – The French government wants to set the age of sexual consent at 15 and make it easier to punish long-standing child sexual abuse amid growing public pressure and a wave of online testimonies about rape and other forms of violence sexual abuse by parents and figure authorities.
Calling this treatment of children “intolerable”, the Ministry of Justice said in a statement that “the government is determined to act quickly to implement the changes that our society expects”.
“The act of sexual penetration by an adult under the age of 15 will be considered rape,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said on Tuesday on France-2 television. Consent could no longer be cited to lessen charges, but exceptions would be made for teenagers who have consensual sex, he said.
The change still needs to be enshrined in the law, but the announcement is a big step after years of efforts to toughen French protection for children who are victims of rape and sexual violence.
An effort to define France’s first age of consent three years ago, in the wake of the global #MeToo movement, failed amid legal complications. But the effort has gained new momentum since charges arose last month of incestuous sexual abuse involving a prominent French political expert, Olivier Duhamel. This sparked an online #MeTooInceste movement in France that resulted in hundreds of similar testimonies.
The Ministry of Justice says it is in discussions with groups of victims over the toughening of punishment for incest and the extension or abolition of the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse, which has avoided the process in several important cases in France in recent years.
It also says it wants to “ensure that the victims of the same perpetrator do not receive different legal treatment”, which could expand the scope of prosecuting people accused of abusing several people over decades.
In the Duhamel case, the Paris prosecutor opened an investigation into alleged “rape and sexual abuse by a person exercising authority” over a child after public accusations made in a book by his stepdaughter that he abused his twin in the 1980s 1980, when the brothers were 13 years old.
Duhamel said he was “the target of personal attacks” and resigned from his various professional positions, including as a respected TV commentator and head of the National Political Science Foundation. The foundation runs the prestigious Sciences Po University in Paris, whose director Frederic Mion resigned this week amid the consequences of the accusations.