France expected to adopt consent-based rape law in the wake of landmark Gisèle Pelicot case
PARIS (AP) — The French Senate is expected to give final approval Wednesday to a bill defining rape and other sexual assaults as any nonconsensual sexual act, which comes in the wake of the groundbreaking drugs and rape case that shook France. Gisèle turned Pelicot into a global icon.
The bill was introduced in January, just weeks after 51 men were found guilty of raping and abusing Gisèle Pelicot. A national reckoning over rape culture in France.
Defending the bill, Green MPs Marie-Charlotte Garin and Véronique Riotton of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party wrote: “It is time to take action and take a new step in the fight against sexual violence.”
The bill states that “any non-consensual sexual act constitutes sexual assault.”
Consent is defined as “freely given, informed, specific, prior and revocable” and is considered “in the light of the circumstances”. The text states that this “cannot be inferred merely from the victim’s silence or lack of response.”
The bill also states that there will be no consent if the sexual act is committed with “violence, coercion, threat or surprise.”
Last week, it was widely approved by lawmakers from nearly every level of the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament. The far right voted against it.
The Senate is expected to give final approval later Wednesday, the final step before the bill becomes law through official publication.
Once approved, France will join many other European countries with similar consent-based laws on rape, including neighboring Germany, Belgium and Spain.
In December, Pelicot’s ex-husband and 50 other men were convicted of sexually assaulting Pelicot between 2011 and 2020 while she was exposed to chemicals. Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while the other defendants’ sentences ranged from 3 to 15 years. The appeals court delivered 10 years harsher sentence to the only person who appealed his conviction earlier this month.
A sad and unprecedented trial How pornography, chat rooms and men’s vague understandings of consent are disparaged in France has been revealed fuels rape culture.
Gisèle Pelicot has since become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence.
