There are already 101 since the beginning of 2019. Feminicides are at the heart of a "Grenelle", this Tuesday in Matignon. The associations are asking the government for more resources to deal with this scourge and better care for the victims. They also plead for the very term "feminicide" to appear in the Penal Code. A request supported and relayed by Charlotte Beluet, prosecutor in Auch in the Gers, who explains the micro Europe 1.
"The challenge is to really name things"
"For me, the challenge is to really name things, it is to stop relegating the death of these women to the rank of news items or statistics," argues the prosecutor. "It is also a counterbalance to all these discourses that we hear around the crime 'passional.' To speak of feminicide is to affirm that there are only conjugal crimes and that we do not strike and we do not kill for love, a man who strikes his wife, he does not lose control of himself, what he seeks is to maintain the control he has over the other, "continues Charlotte Beluet.
Like infanticide or paricide, the word feminicide does not appear in the penal code at the present time. Since 2017, however, the law allows to increase the penalty in case of "gender crime". This is an aggravating circumstance when this crime is committed because of the sex of the victim, his sexual orientation or his "gender identity". A more neutral formulation meant to respect the universal character of French law, but which integrates the sexist motive. This aggravating circumstance has supplemented another that already existed when the perpetrator of the murder or violence is a spouse or ex-spouse of the victim.
"It does not mean that the murder of a woman is more serious"
But for Charlotte Beluet as for associations, the term "feminicide" is important and does not detract from the universal nature of the law. "Feminicide does not mean that the murder of a woman is more serious than the murder of a man, which means that the chilling and serious thing is that within a couple a woman can be considered a property, "says the prosecutor. And to go on: "To speak of feminicide is to speak of all the other domestic violence that exists in society, and there is not a day when I do not have a gendarmerie service or a service. police who call me for domestic violence, you can imagine the extent of the phenomenon ".
At present, there is nothing to prevent magistrates and prosecutors from using the term at the hearing to reflect this societal reality. This is all the more important since, according to the observers, the aggravating circumstance of sexism is for the moment very little used.