PARIS (AP) – The French government wants to set the age of sexual assent at 15 and make it easier to punish long-ago sexual abuse of children amid mounting public pressure and a wave of online testimony about rape and other sexual assaults by parents and authority figures.
The Justice Department called such treatment of children “intolerable” and said in a statement that “the government is determined to act quickly to bring about the changes our society expects”.
“An act of sexual penetration by an adult of a minor under 15 years of age will be considered a rape,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said on France-2 television on Tuesday. Consent could no longer be cited to reduce costs, but exceptions would be made for teens who have consensual sex, he said.
The change should still be enshrined in law, but the announcement is an important step after years of efforts to bolster French protections for children who are victims of rape and sexual violence.
An attempt to institute 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 momentum since allegations of incestuous sexual abuse emerged last month involving a prominent French political expert, Olivier Duhamel. That sparked off an online # MeTooInceste movement in France that sparked hundreds of similar testimonials.
The Justice Department says it is in talks with victim groups about tougher punishment for incest and extending or removing the statute of restrictions on child sexual abuse, preventing prosecution in several high profile cases in France in recent years.
It also says it “wants to ensure that victims of the same perpetrator do not receive different legal treatment,” which could increase the possibilities to prosecute people accused of abusing multiple people over decades.
In the Duhamel case, the Paris Prosecutor opened an investigation into alleged “rape and sexual abuse by a custodian” child following public allegations in a book by his stepdaughter that he had abused her twin brother in the 1980s, when the siblings were 13 years old.
Duhamel said he was “the target of personal assault” and retired from many professional roles, including as a respected TV commentator and head of the National Foundation of Political Sciences. The foundation manages the prestigious Sciences Po University in Paris, whose director Frederic Mion resigned this week due to the fallout of the allegations.