FRANCE
The Associated Press
February 13, 2018
Case rekindles debate about age of consent in France as family argue suspect should be charged with rape
A 29-year-old French man went on trial on Tuesday in a Paris suburb accused of sexually abusing 11-year-old girl in a case that has rekindled debate about France’s age of consent.
France does not have a legal age under which a minor cannot agree to a sexual relationship – although the country’s top court has ruled that children aged five and under cannot consent. Lawyers for the suspect argued that the girl was consenting and aware of what she was doing, while lawyers for the girl have said she was simply too young and confused to resist.
In a decision that shocked many, the prosecutor’s office in the town of Pontoise decided to put the man on trial not for rape but on charges of “sexual abuse of a minor under 15”.
Defence lawyers say the man and the girl had met in a park and the girl had voluntarily followed him to an apartment and consented to intercourse. They have also said their client, then 28, thought she was at least 16.
The girl’s family filed a complaint of rape in the town of Montmagny but prosecutors apparently felt the suspect did not use violence or coercion. French law defines rape as sexual penetration committed “by violence, coercion, threat or surprise”.
“She was 11 years and 10 months old, so nearly 12 years old,” the defence lawyer Marc Goudarzian said Tuesday. “It changes the story. So she is not a child.”
His colleague Sandrine Parise-Heideiger went further, saying: “We are not dealing with a sexual predator on a poor little faultless goose.”
She said as soon as children have “sexual expressiveness and you have an attitude of putting yourself in danger” then “it doesn’t necessarily mean the person on the other side is a sexual predator”.
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