{"id":425010,"date":"2025-04-24T16:46:57","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T14:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/04\/24\/cedu-condanna-francia-stupro-minori\/"},"modified":"2025-04-24T17:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T15:50:12","slug":"gender-based-violence-european-court-of-human-rights-condemns-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/04\/24\/gender-based-violence-european-court-of-human-rights-condemns-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender-based violence, European Court of Human Rights condemns France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)<\/strong> chastises France over legislation punishing sexual offences<\/strong>. And it pours gasoline on the fire of a particularly heated French public debate in recent months, following the historic Pelicot trial<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In a ruling issued today (April 24), the ECHR, the Strasbourg-based legal body of the Council of Europe<\/strong>, has ruled in favour of three French women<\/strong> who had brought the case before it, claiming that the French\u00a0authorities had failed to protect them adequately<\/strong> with respect to the sexual violence they suffered when they were 13, 14, and 16 years old<\/strong> respectively. Specifically, the plaintiffs pointed out that the investigators and national courts had not sufficiently taken into account their very young age and consequent vulnerability<\/strong> in the face of aggressors.<\/p>\n

In their decision, judges\u00a0recognised<\/a> that in all three cases “the domestic courts had not properly assessed the impact of all the circumstance<\/strong>s surrounding the events; nor had they taken sufficient account, in evaluating whether the applicants had been capable of understanding and of giving consent<\/strong>, of the particularly vulnerable situations<\/strong> in which they had found themselves, particularly in view of their ages.<\/p>\n

”<\/p>\n

\n

Judgment L. and Others v. France – criminalisation of non-consensual sexual actshttps:\/\/t.co\/xrR7VSvcX2<\/a>#ECHR<\/a> #CEDH<\/a> #ECHRpress<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/qhkYT9A8Sg<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) April 24, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In two out of three cases, the device further reads, “the criminal proceedings had not been conducted
\npromptly or with due care<\/strong>.” Slowness and superficiality. This is not, the judges made clear, a verdict on the criminal responsibility of the people accused of committing the crimes in question, but rather a procedural assessment of the conduct of French\u00a0judicial authorities<\/strong>, which reflects (negatively) on the effective protection of human rights in the very nation that claims (rightly or wrongly) to have invented them.<\/p>\n

The first case involved a\u00a013-year-old<\/strong> girl at the time of the events, in 2009<\/span>. Describing herself as “psychologically fragile,” the woman reported being raped by two 21-year-old firefighters. <\/strong>She stated, among other things, that her personal contacts were then shared with other firefighters who subsequently molested her. The second plaintiff reported rape by a 21-year-old and a 29-year-old at the age of 14<\/strong>, while the third plaintiff recounted being violated by an 18-year-old in her own home<\/strong> after a party when she was 16<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Court thus condemned France for violating several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights<\/strong>, where torture and inhuman or degrading treatment<\/strong> are expressly prohibited, as well as those enshrining the right of women to respect for their private lives<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Today’s ruling is bound to keep alive\u2014and probably to refresh\u2014the national debate<\/strong> on whether to include in the definition of rape<\/strong> provided by criminal law also the notion of consent, or to be more precise, the absence thereof<\/strong>. Since last year, when the landmark trial of Dominique Pelicot<\/strong> and 50 other men accused of having repeatedly raped<\/strong> Gis\u00e8le<\/strong>, Pelicot’s wife whom he drugged for that purpose, the discussion has focused mainly on the (non)consensual dimension of the sexual act.<\/p>\n

\"Gis\u00e8le<\/a>
Gis\u00e8le Pelicot (foto: Christophe Simon\/Afp)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

French regulations have increased penalties for sexual violence and “misconduct”<\/strong>, but there is still a long way to go, according to French\u00a0human rights activists. To date, national legislation deems the definition of rape satisfied when “an act of sexual penetration or an oral-genital act<\/strong> is committed on a person, by violence, coercion, threat, or surprise<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

On the merits, the regulatory systems of the Twenty-seven differ greatly<\/strong>.\u00a0What is certain is that in the EU, the numbers on gender-based violence are\u00a0still dangerously high<\/a>:\u00a0one in three women will experience at least one sexual assault in their lifetime<\/strong>\u00a0in the home, workplace, or public place.<\/span>\u00a0For half the population of the Union, which professes to be a global bastion of human rights<\/span>, no place is safe<\/strong>, despite steps taken by EU lawmakers\u2014and some member states\u2014in the right direction.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Strasbourg Court judges, French authorities failed to adequately protect three women victims of teenage rape. The debate is heated, but the national penal code still does not cover the dimension of consent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":425006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29788],"tags":[26733,26695,31093,31092,31094,26868],"class_list":["post-425010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diritti-en","tag-abusi-sui-minori-en","tag-consenso-en","tag-crime-of-rape-en","tag-european-court-of-human-rights-en","tag-violenza-di-genere-en","tag-human-rights-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425010"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425016,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425010\/revisions\/425016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}