When French President Emmanuel Macron at the beginning of the year promised tougher laws against child abuse, it was with an outstretched hand to the victims.
- We are here, we listen to you, we believe you, and you will never be alone again, he said in a video statement.
More concrete information came from the Minister of Justice Éric Dupont-Moretti, when he announced in mid-February that he wants "sexual penetration" where one party is under 15 and the other is an adult to be counted as rape.
So far, it has only been possible to count as rape if violence or coercion has been used, ie the same criteria as for adults.
The age limit is proposed to be 18 in cases of incest, which in France includes all family members, even where there are no blood ties.
Designated profile
The French elite has been shaken by several abuse scandals, but the now triggering factor was especially the book La familia grande by the lawyer Camille Kouchner.
The book was published in January and describes how a close relative allegedly raped her twin brother.
The designated perpetrator is a well-known academic profile in the French political and cultural elite who has come under particularly harsh spotlight, but in an interview with France 5, she herself says that incest is hardly unique to this social class.
- I had famous parents and we hung out with famous people but the incest was not due to that.
"Huge problem"
Kouchner's testimony triggered a storm on the internet, partly under the hashtag "#MetooInceste".
Perpetrators have previously, without being questioned, been able to openly brag about their sexual abuse of children with reference to a sexual liberation that took its starting point in the '68 movement.
Critics have almost been dismissed as ornate and petty-bourgeois, but in 2019 the book "Consent" was published about the author Gabriel Matzneff who himself sat on TV and described sexual contacts with children.
French surveys have indicated that as many as one in ten people say they have been subjected to incest, but now the rules can be tightened.
- The government has begun to realize that there is a huge problem, says lawyer Martine Moscovici to SVT's Foreign Office.
In this week's episode of the Foreign Office: the abuse scandals that shook France's power elite. Watch here on SVT Play, or 22.00 on Tuesday on SVT2.