00:00Should the notion of consent be added to French law books when defining rape and sexual assault?
00:05Well, after years of debate between politicians, but also rights groups and legal scholars,
00:10French MPs voted in favour of such a change.
00:14155 to 31, the National Assembly adopted the linguistic compromises found at the committee level,
00:20sending the bill to the Senate for a final vote.
00:22If passed, Article 222-22 will no longer read that rape is all acts of sexual penetration.
00:30of any nature done to another with violence, constraint, threat, or surprise.
00:34Instead, sexual assault's legal definition will be simplified and defined as
00:39all sexual acts done to another or oneself without consent.
00:44Two other paragraphs were also added to the definition,
00:46ensuring different circumstances remain within that legal framework,
00:50such as surprise, violence, threats, and constraints.
00:53For rights activists and lawyers, this symbolic change in the law may help shift the societal needle in France.
00:59from one of a rape culture to that of a culture of consent.
01:03It's going to be able to raise conversation with people and people are going to be like,
01:08OK, maybe now I have to think more about consent and not being like, OK, I'm going to get away with this.
01:15Like, maybe I have to, like, think what is consent to me.
01:18For example, in the Pellico case, you had one of the rapists that were, he was 50-something,
01:24and he was like, before this case, I didn't know, nobody taught me what consent is.
01:30In addition to raising awareness about consent, one of the hopes for the new definition
01:34is for it to improve France's legal record in the treatment of cases.
01:38In France, studies show that more than three out of four rape cases never make it to trial.
01:44Following in the footsteps of other nations like Belgium, Sweden, and Cyprus,
01:48the hope is that the onus of proof of consent will now be on the perpetrators and not the victims.
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