French MPs are to debate legislation to crack down on sexist or sexual aggression and harassment, especially assaults on children, reports The Guardian.
A proposed legal bill would set down a clear age of consent for minors after a shocking case in which a rape charge was dropped when a court decided an 11-year-old girl had consented to sex with a man more than twice her age.
It will also give traumatised child victims more time to come forward to bring criminal charges against their attackers.
The announcement on Monday from the French equality minister, Marlène Schiappa, could hardly have come at a more appropriate time, with scores of French women coming forward to detail incidents of harassment and assault following the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
A Twitter appeal by the radio journalist Sandra Muller using #balancetonporc (squeal on your pig), encouraging women to publicly shame their attackers, was top of the French Twitter trend list over the weekend. A second international campaign #MeToo is now trending in France.
On Monday, Schiappa launched a pre-debate “citizens’ consultation” over the legislation, including the possibility of police warnings for everyday sexist acts such as wolf whistling and comments about physical appearance in the street.
“The point is that the whole of society has to redefine what it will accept and what it will not,” Schiappa told La Croix, a Catholic newspaper.
The minister pointed out that there are 84,000 rapes and 220,000 sexual assaults in France each year, and one woman is killed by a violent partner in the country every three days.
“We want to reduce those statistics for violence … All sexually motivated violence must be taken into account, including male sexual violence against small boys and disabled people. On this, we have to address another taboo,” she said.