Being a “cam-girl” or “cam-boy” does not fall under prostitution, according to the Court of Cassation.
This consists of filming and exposing yourself on the internet in sexual practices for remuneration.
However, the term prostitution legally presupposes “physical contact”.
The highest judicial court rejected on Wednesday, in a judgment consulted by AFP, an appeal from the National Confederation of Catholic Family Associations (Cnafc).
This association, whose objective is to "promote the family", contested a dismissal, partially confirmed by the Court of Appeal in February 2021, after a judicial investigation opened in 2010 concerning "facts observed on four French sites in pornographic nature.
“This complaint was aimed, in particular, at behavior consisting, for young women, in engaging, in front of a camera, in acts of a sexual nature, broadcast live by an audiovisual means of communication to customers who solicited them and remunerated them by a remote means of payment", or the practice of "cam-girl", specifies the Court of Cassation.
No extension of the legal definition of prostitution
For the Cnfac, the persons in charge of these Internet sites were liable to prosecution for “aggravated pimping” because the “models” of the site would engage in what is qualified as prostitution.
But the Court of Cassation contradicted this reasoning and confirmed that of the Court of Appeal, which starts from the incrimination by the Criminal Code of procuring, "which consists for anyone, in any way whatsoever, in aiding or assisting prostitution others, protect this activity, convince a person to engage in it, profit from it or facilitate its exercise”.
To "determine whether a behavior can be prosecuted as pimping, it is necessary, beforehand, to define what falls under prostitution", which has no definition in the law, but which since a judgment of the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation of 1996, is defined as a practice which “consists of lending oneself, for remuneration, to physical contact of any kind whatsoever, in order to satisfy the sexual needs of others”.
In the absence of physical contact, to say that the practice of "caming" would fall under prostitution "supposes an extension of the definition" of this practice, which the legislator did not "intend" to do, "including at the occasion of recent laws penalizing certain behaviors of a sexual nature”, dismisses the Court of Cassation.
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