The Orleans Court of Appeal is due to render its decision Tuesday in a case of sexual assault of a 27-year-old man on a 12-year-old girl.
The victim always said he was consenting and the family ended up withdrawing his complaint.
The justice did not hold back the rape and the coercion.
It is a business against the grain, while Parliament has just adopted Thursday a law against sexual violence against minors including the threshold of consent at 15 years, and 18 years in case of incest.
The Orléans court of appeal is due to render its decision on Tuesday in a case of sexual assault by a 27-year-old man on a 12-year-old girl, in which the courts have not upheld the constraint and the rape.
The man was sentenced to 30 months in prison at first instance in November.
The family had filed and then withdrawn their complaint
From the start, the little girl talks about a consensual relationship.
“I loved him,” she says.
She ran away several times with the 27-year-old man, a relative who knew his age.
His parents had then initiated proceedings with the police.
But the little girl became a mother and the family withdrew her complaint.
At the trial, an ad hoc administrator was appointed by the courts to represent the interests of the victim against her will.
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"It seems difficult to imagine that a 12-year-old could have voluntarily consented to a relationship with a 27-year-old man until having a child. The age difference should have suggested that there was what 'in law we call' constraint '", explains Marie-Paule Carrey-Le Bas, of the France Victime association.
Despite the fact that the act of penetration was established between this 27-year-old major and this 12-year-old minor, the case was not investigated.
If he had been prosecuted for rape, the defendant would have been tried at the assizes and would have incurred up to 20 years in prison, against only 7 years for the offense of sexual assault.