Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa has welcomed the decision to set the age of consent at 15
France is to set the legal age of consent at 15 after outrage when rape charges were not brought against two men accused of having sex with two 11-year-old girls.
The age will be set in an amendment to the
Code penal and Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa said she was
delighted that "after consultations with citizens and an experts' report" the age of 15 had been recommended.
At present, there is no age of consent in France and sex with an under-15 is only a crime if it has been forced.
The new law will mean under-15s will not legally be able to consent to sex. In the cases of the 11-year-old girls, the men had been able to say no force was used and they were charged with a sex offence involving a minor. One man was acquitted - the prosecution has launched an appeal - and the other case is continuing.
For clarification on the law regarding sexual offences in France,
read this article.There had been discussions on whether the age of 13 or 15 would be chosen with President Macron saying he favoured 15 while the main Paris prosecutor had said it would be 'consistent' at 13.At the end of March the government will introduce new measures against sexism, street harassment and sexual violence.
It comes as an Ifop poll said that one woman in three (32%) had been the victim of some form of sexual harassment in their working lives.
Comment: According to:
Is France Attempting to Normalize Pedophilia?
New Draft Law
Amid public shock at the idea that an 11-year-old child could be deemed able to consent to sexual intercourse with an adult, the French government - represented by the Minister of Justice, Nicole Belloubet, and the Minister of Women's Rights, Marlene Schiappa - announced a new draft law that aims to 'solve the problem' by setting an age of consent at 13 years old.
Note, this does not mean that the age under which it is illegal to have sexual relations with a child in France has been dropped from 15 to 13, but rather that if the sexually abused child is at least 13 years old, then the courts may presume that consent was given.
The minister of justice has been pretty clear about this point and publicly stated:
"13 years would be an age that seems to me to correspond to what the High Commission for Equality between Women and Men advocated and which other foreign countries have advocated"
While the French government and mainstream media laud this development as evidence of great societal progress, they only focus on the two latest abnormal precedents and forget that there was already an implicit age of consent - 15 years old - that was almost always enforced by courts, for decades. So what is depicted as great progress in laws protecting the child is, in practice, a major regression where the age at which a child can be presumed to have consented to sex with an adult has been dropped from 15 to 13. The result being that adults accused of sexual abuse of a minor (between 13 and 15 years old) will likely be given lighter sentences.
Please read the whole
article for the unseemly issues surrounding this 'debate'.
Comment: According to: Is France Attempting to Normalize Pedophilia? Please read the whole article for the unseemly issues surrounding this 'debate'.