On September 2, the trial of Dominique Pelicot and the other 50 defendants of raping his now ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot. A process that monopolizes media interest, in France and beyond its borders, largely due to the victim’s will for it to be celebrated before the public and the press. Thus, the media coverage of the case is causing a debate in French society about rape culture and the gaps in the judicial system regarding sexual and gender violence.
This same week, Gisèle Pelicot testified for the second time in order to speak after the presentation of evidence. “I am a destroyed woman and I don’t know how I am going to get back up,” she said after the testimony of the main defendant, her husband. The victim, who insists that the hearings be public, stated in court: “I appreciate that you give me the floor, because for eight weeks I have felt hurt.
Low percentage of complaints
In France, only 6% of victims of sexual assault report the incidents and only 0.6% of reported rapes or attempted rapes end in a conviction. “The figures of sexual and gender violence in the country are alarming and reveal the extent of this social phenomenon,” he denounced this same year. Amnesty International (AI).
The organization also pointed out that when victims decide to come forward, they often have to face blaming questions from police, prosecutors and judges; to the minimization of the seriousness of the events or an inversion in responsibility for the attack, which puts the focus on the victim instead of the accused. “Today, rape victims who obtain justice only do so after a long and painful fight. Rape culture has to give way to consent culture,” AI concludes.
Same diagnosis by the Council of Europe, which already in 2019 published a report that accused France of providing an insufficient criminal response to violence against women in general and for its definition of rape in particular, since “it is not based on absence of consent, but requires recourse to violence, coercion, threat or surprise.”
The consent
That of consent and its possible registration in the legislation is one of the issues that are appearing the most in the debates surrounding the Pelicot case. “Today in France there are very few rape complaints that end in conviction,” confirms Carole Hardouin-Le Goff, professor of Private Law and Criminal Sciences at the University of Paris-II-Panthéon-Assas and director of Studies at the Institute of Criminology. and Criminal Law of Paris. “Many are archived because there are missing elements to establish the facts. If we inscribe in the law that rape is a sexual relationship not consented to by the victim, that would force the aggressor to ensure that the victim consents before the act.”
The jurist also points out that it would be an especially useful element in cases in which the victims are incapacitated, such as chemical submission. “This is what we see in the Pelicot case, where we find defendants who say that she agreed; ‘who didn’t say anything, so he consented’. When, in reality, we know that he was in a state close to a coma.”
Alleged culprits
The high rate of rape cases filed without going to trial contrasts with the fact that, unlike other crimes, in rape the alleged aggressor is identified in a large percentage of cases. It also contrasts with the increase in the number of complaints registered in the last decade, according to a study by the Institute of Public Policieswhich has analyzed data from French courts between 2012 and 2021.
“The data show that complaints of violence committed against women in the period have increased significantly,” says Maëlle Stricot, doctoral student at the Paris School of Economics, affiliated with the Institute of Public Policies and author of the study. “A particularly pronounced growth after 2017, the year of #MeToo and testimonies about sexual harassment and assault suffered by millions of women.”
The study also points out that when there is a will to improve the situation, the efforts have an impact. And he gives the example of the fight against marital violence, which has had specific legislation and provisions in France. Thus, the rate of dismissed cases decreased from 76% in 2016 to 67% in 2020, while in the same period the number of violations increased from 82% in 2012 to 94%.
This increase is also related to the fact that, in many cases of sexual violence, the complaint occurs years after the events. “In the statistics we see that the average number of days between the moment of the events and the arrival of the case before justice has been increasing; the victims seem to speak out about older events,” says Maëlle Stricot.
That is why different feminist voices are also putting on the table the need to expand legal tools. On the one hand, developing the principle of serialitywhich today allows investigators to use past events during the investigation, even if they are prescribed, when they correspond to the same author. Some associations and jurists believe that it could be expanded beyond investigations and open the door to also suspending the statute of limitations for judging events that go back decades.
In this sense, they point out the law to fight against violence against minors approved in France in 2021 which introduces the principle of sliding prescription (prescription glissante): when the same aggressor commits a new act, the statute of limitations is moved to the date of the most recent act.
Pedagogy and prevention
Experts explain that the current legal definition of rape largely corresponds to a stereotyped idea, an attack carried out with violence by a stranger. However, this does not respond to a large part of the judicial reality, since 90% of victims of sexual violence know their attacker. In many cases, the absence of evidence or physical consequences, either because a lot of time has passed or because the violence or coercion exercised was not physical, often means that they never come to trial.
Currently, investigations focus on consolidating the victim’s statement and not on the perpetrator’s behavior or background. And experts point out that inscribing consent in the law would put more weight on the alleged perpetrator and the demonstration that the other person agreed to the relationship and less on the victim.
“It is important for every citizen to understand what rape is and they will do better if we inscribe in the legislation that rape is sexual intercourse without the consent of one of the two parties. There is a dimension that is both pedagogical and preventive,” explains Carole Hardouin-Le Goff. “By basing the crime of rape not on the use of coercion but on the lack of consent, the Penal Code would unambiguously proclaim that every sexual relationship requires the free agreement of the parties.”
However, this idea does not have the agreement of the entire feminist community. The philosopher Manon García held on a platform in Le Monde that if the legal definition of rape is based on the absence of consent there is a risk of “considering that it is the behavior of the victim that creates the rape and not that of the rapist. We expose the victim to scrutiny – ‘how could she not consent with the short skirt she was wearing?’ – and to be pressured throughout the judicial process, rather than focusing on the behavior of the accused.”
“In the world of law, there are jurists who also see it this way,” acknowledges Hardouin-Le Goff. “But in criminal law we analyze the behavior of the aggressor. And if we write consent into law, we will be able to verify whether the attacker made sure he had the victim’s consent. But always focusing on the aggressor.”
Gisèle Halimi and the great judgments of feminism
That is why associations like the Women’s Foundation They prefer to opt for “comprehensive legislation” that goes further, “that clarifies the definition of rape and consent” but that also “introduces a legal definition of incest, that prosecutes serial rapists for all known violations, that extends the protection orders for rape victims, that facilitate the obtaining of evidence, that create specialized brigades, that prohibit investigating the sexual history of the victims…
They also demand that immediate and free access to psycho-traumatological care be allowed and that economic resources be provided to this public policy and to the associations that are carrying it out.
In the context of the Avignon trial, two landmark court cases are cited as examples of moments that served as turning points in the fight for women’s rights in France. In 1972, the so-called Bobigny trial, in which five women were tried for performing an abortion: a minor, Marie-Claire Chevalier – who had an abortion after being raped – and four adults, including her mother.
Her lawyer Gisèle Halimi, who is an icon of the feminist struggle in France, managed to ensure that the trial did not focus on the defendants, but on the repressive law in force at that time. A political process, which demonstrated the obsolescence of the French penal code and encouraged public powers to change the law. Three years later, the Veil law was enacted in France, which decriminalized the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.
Halimi was also the lawyer in another major judicial case, that of two young Belgian women (Anne Tonglet and Araceli Castellano) raped by three men in a cove near Marseille in 1974. The work of Gisèle Halimi and the tenacity of the victims – stigmatized during the trial for being lesbians and for practicing naturism – allowed the case to reach the criminal court in 1978, a trial with great media coverage. In 1980 France passed a new law regarding rape.
On March 8, President Emmanuel Macron stated, for the first time, that he was in favor of consent being inscribed in French law. A parliamentary commission was launched shortly afterwards to evolve the legislation, but the dissolution of the National Assembly in June put an end to the initiative. Faced with the possibility of reactivating legislative initiatives on the issue, the new Minister of Justice also stated on September 27 be favorable to the measure.
#Pélicot #case #puts #consent #center #debate #fight #sexual #violence #France
