After the National Assembly, the Senate is preparing this Wednesday, June 18 to modify the criminal definition of violation to integrate the concept of non -consent, a strong symbolic evolution that seems to be close to leading to Parliament, despite the reluctance.
The bill presented by Deputies Véronique Riotton (Renaissance) and Marie-Charlotte Garin (environmentalist) seems to be destined for a wide adoption of the upper chamber, reassured by a Trans-Partisan parliamentary mission of the Assembly and for an opinion of the State Council, favorable to this modification.
“Culture of consent”
The objective shown by the authors: “moving from a culture of violation of a culture of consent”, and sends a strong signal a few months after the resounding test of rape of Mazan.
The reform redefines the article of the Criminal Code related to all sexual aggressions, including violation. It proposes to redefine them as “any sexual act without consumption.”
“The consent is free and enlightened, specific, previous and revocable requirement” and “cannot be deduced by the only silence or the only lack of reaction of the victim,” the text provides, whose writing usually seems generally shared by the deputies as by the senators.
Finally, it specifies that “there is no consent if the sexual act is committed with violence, restriction, threat or surprise”, four modalities already present in the Criminal Code.
The senators made some changes in the committee
“This makes it possible to establish a clear law, understandable by all, which will say that violation is a relationship not contemplated and will preserve the achievements of our Criminal Law,” explains Senator Les Républicins Elsa Schalck, appointed Corappleure in this text. She says “I hope this law focuses more on the author than on the victim.”
In the committee, the senators have made some minor modifications in the text of the deputies, which should lead to the call of a joint committee, a meeting of parliamentarians of the two chambers, in the coming weeks, to lead to a commitment before the entry into force of this law.
The Senate preferred to establish in the Criminal Code that the judges “would appreciate” the non -consent with respect to the “context”, instead of the “surrounding circumstances”, the formula retained in the assembly but less faithful according to the senators of the jurisprudence.
These debates about the criminal definition of violation, which will begin at the end of the afternoon in the Senate, will once more illuminate a file that does not consensus, even with associations for the defense of women’s rights.
Some really fear that incorporating not to consent to the criminal definition of rape leads to focus the investigation into the attitude of the victim, or lead to a kind of “contractualization” of sexual relations.
Source: BFM TV
