“Who is really listening to us?”: seven years after the launch of the #MeToo movement, a hundred personalities, including numerous actresses, ask, in a column published this Tuesday, May 14, for a comprehensive law against sexual violence.
“We are 100, but in reality we are hundreds of thousands,” write the signatories of this text accompanied by a petition started by the Women Foundation, #Metoomedia and the actress Anna Mouglalis and published a few hours before the Opening Ceremony of the Film Festival of Cannes.
“We are not numbers”
And the signatories continue: “our #MeToo speeches have revealed a reality surrounded by denial: sexist and sexual violence is systemic, not exceptional. However (…) who really listens to us in the column also published on the website ?” from the newspaper Le Monde.
Among the signatories are the actresses Isabelle Adjani, Charlotte Arnould, Emmanuelle Béart, Juliette Binoche, Emma de Caunes, Judith Godrèche, Isild Le Besco, Muriel Robin, the authors Leila Slimani, Christine Angot, Vanessa Springora and the actor Philippe Torreton.
“For seven years we have spoken for ourselves and for all the women, men and children who cannot do so,” they write. “We are not numbers: women and men from all professional sectors, we come together to demand a comprehensive law against sexual and gender violence, ambitious and resourced. Because despite the bravery of the victims, impunity grows.”
The signatories consider in particular “unacceptable” that the dismissal rate of complaints of sexual violence “has reached the crazy rate of 94% in 2022” and warn that they no longer accept “the effects of untracked ads.”
“Abysmal delay”
“The inclusion of the single word consent in the law will not make it possible to compensate for France’s abysmal delay in this area,” they believe, in reference to the commitment made in March by Emmanuel Macron.
The signatories demand “a comprehensive law that clarifies, among other things, the definition of rape and consent, introduces incest, prosecutes serial rapists for all known rapes, expands protection orders for rape victims, facilitate the collection of evidence, create specialized brigades, prohibit investigations into the sexual past of victims.
This law must also allow “immediate and free access to psychotraumatological care, to finally provide financial means to this public policy and the associations that implement it,” they add.
The publication of this petition comes after several months of revelations about sexual violence committed in the film industry, with testimonies in particular from Judith Godrèche and Isild Le Besco.
“Since 2017, not much has happened in the fight against sexual violence,” Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women’s Foundation, told AFP. “The increase in complaints has at the same time translated into an increase in untracked rankings, #Metoo is being sent to the trash.”
“If we do not solve the problem of resources for investigations, for the courts, the integration of the notion of consent in the definition of rape will not change anything, we need political will to really solve the problem of impunity,” he adds. . “But at the moment there is no such political will.”
Source: BFM TV
