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European court faults France over sexual consent rules
The European Court of Human Rights ordered France to pay 20,000 euros in damages and found its sexual consent laws inadequate in protecting against non-consensual acts.
- On September 4, a Strasbourg-based human rights tribunal determined that French legislation on sexual consent is inadequate in a case concerning a pharmacy assistant who was pressured by her employer.
- The ruling followed the plaintiff exhausting all French appeals after a 2021 court acquitted the accused using a signed contract that deemed the relationship consensual.
- The court identified deficiencies in France’s legal system, ruled that the European Convention’s Articles 3 and 8 had been breached, and determined that the plaintiff experienced secondary victimisation during the proceedings.
- France was ordered to pay EA €20,000 in damages plus €1,503.77 in legal costs, with the court affirming “consent is by nature revocable” and prior commitments cannot constitute ongoing consent.
- The ruling may prompt France’s parliament to pass a draft law redefining rape as any non-consensual act and shifting the burden of proof onto alleged perpetrators.
16 Articles
16 Articles
The European Court of Human Rights has condemned France for failing to adequately protect a woman in a sadomasochistic relationship with a professional superior. The man, 16 years older than the victim, was the head of a pharmacy in a hospital to which she joined as a trained employee. The two renegotiated on several occasions a contract of sexual nature between the two. The sentence, however, underlines that the woman had repeatedly “encouraged…
The European Court of Human Rights again condemned France on Thursday, 4 September, for its judicial treatment of sexual violence, including the notions of consent and enforcement.
European court faults France over sexual consent laws
Ruling on the case of a pharmacist who accused her boss of coercing her into an abusive relationship, the European Court of Human Rights found France's sexual consent laws insufficient and ordered damages to be paid.
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