“Challenging this law is returning to a situation where, from the age of 4, a child who had been penetrated by an adult had to prove coercion, threat, violence or surprise. “In a petition shared this Thursday, eighty personalities and associations, including lawyer Camille Kouchner or former minister Elisabeth Moreno, warn of “the risk of two serious setbacks to come” in terms of the protection of minors against sexual violence.
The co-signatories fear a particular decision to be made by the Constitutional Council on Friday, by which it could challenge a law of April 2021 which set the threshold at 15 years below which a minor cannot be considered as consenting to a sexual relationship with an adult.
The end of the ciivise questions
In particular, this text was signed by senator and former minister (PS) Laurence Rossignol, author and lawyer Camille Kouchner, president of the Feminist Collective against Rape Emmanuel Piet, or even judge Edouard Durand, co-president of the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children (Ciivise).
The law of 2021 punishes with twenty years of criminal imprisonment any act of sexual penetration or bucco-genital act committed by an adult on a minor under the age of fifteen, when the age difference between the adult and the minor is at least five years, and this even without violence, constraint, threat or surprise.
But a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) examined on July 4 aims to repeal this text. This “frontally calls into question the presumption of innocence” insofar as it establishes an “automatic guilt” of the respondent, pleaded before the “Sages” the applicant lawyers Louis Heloun and Antoine Ory.
Another concern raised by the petition: the announced end of the Ciivise, created in 2021 by the government in the wake of the #MeToo movement. The institution, whose priority mission is to collect the testimonies of victims and to draw up recommendations, had asked for the extension of its lifespan. In vain: the Secretary of State for Children Charlotte Caubel reiterated that her work would end in November.
“Today the State is at a historic turning point: to silence the victims, or to breathe new life into their word”, affirm the signatories, who conclude: “By its voice, the State will say to the victims ” Speak ” or it will tell them ” Shut up ”. »