Sexual violence: personalities denounce "a bill emptied of all significance" - France 24

Paris (AFP)

About fifty associative leaders and personalities, including the director Andréa Bescond and the actress Alexandra Lamy, criticize in the Journal du dimanche the proposed law strengthening the protection of minors in the face of sexual violence, which according to them has been "emptied of all significance ".

Modified on the margins Thursday by the Senate, the text will go back to second reading in the National Assembly on April 15, the government wishing to see its provisions become operational as soon as possible.

But for the signatories of a forum published by the JDD, the account is not there.

"Behind its title of + law to strengthen the protection of minors +, this device weakens the protection of children", say the signatories, including Isabelle Aubry, president of the association Face à incest, and the director Karl Zéro.

The forum criticizes in particular the "Romeo and Juliet clause" conditioning the application of the law to an age gap of at least five years between the minor victim and the major aggressor.

This provision "reduces the threshold of non-consent to 13 years when rapes are committed by adults of 18 years, even though today the penal code prohibits any sexual relationship between a minor under 15 and an adult. , under the qualification + of sexual attack +. It is a step back ", estimate the signatories.

Regarding incest, these personalities deplore that "the de jure or de facto authority must be demonstrated for the spouses, partners or partners of the latter".

Finally, they regret that the imprescriptibility they requested is "more than a sliding prescription", seeing there "a very relative progress, which does not recognize traumatic amnesia, of which more than half of the victims of sexual violence during childhood report ".

"We who have spoken so that children are finally protected, we denounce a bill emptied of all scope. We ask you to act, in the best interests of the child," conclude the signatories of this forum in the form of an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron.

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