Paris (AFP)
More than a hundred criminal lawyers emphasize the principles of "prescription and respect for the presumption of innocence" qualified as "only effective ramparts" against arbitrariness, in a forum published on Sunday on the site of Le Monde, a week after the Cesar ceremony marked by the Polanski controversy.
"We pride ourselves on having to recall it, but no accusation is never proof of anything: it would be enough if not to lay down its only truth to prove and condemn" write these 114 "women, lawyers and penalists", "viscerally attached to the principles on which our law is founded "and" confronted every day with the pain of the victims but also, and just as much, with the violence of the prosecution ".
"Women evolving in an environment where a number of tenors jostle for each other for whom the adage + no sex under the dress + has little more effect than wishful thinking", they emphasize that "Roman Polanski was the subject several public charges, including a single judicial complaint which has not given rise to any prosecution: he is therefore not guilty. "
Polanski, awarded by the César for best achievement last Sunday for his film "J'accuse", has been the subject of several accusations of rape and sexual assault in recent years for facts dating back several decades.
The last accusation, in December, comes from the ex-French model Valentine Monnier, who has not filed a complaint for the facts she denounces, prescribed.
In the United States, he was still prosecuted for illegal sex in 1977 with a minor, Samantha Geimer.
For a week, the French cinema community has been torn between defenders of Polanski, who criticize the violence against him, and supporters of actress Adèle Haenel, who had left the room in protest at the time the prize was awarded to the director.
"It is urgent to stop considering prescription and respect for the presumption of innocence as instruments of impunity: in reality, they constitute the only effective bulwarks against an arbitrariness of which each one can, in these deleterious times, be at everything moment the victim ", say the lawyers who denounce the" public opinion court ".
For them, "it is false to say that the judiciary would today show systemic violence against women or that it would not take sufficient account of their word".
"We note on the contrary, whatever our place at the hearing, that a disturbing and dreadful presumption of guilt is invited too often in matters of sexual offenses. Thus it becomes more and more difficult to enforce the principle, however fundamental, according to which the doubt must obstinately profit the accused "they add.
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