The judgment concerned applications from three victims of rape, who were minors at the time of the assaults.
The first applicant, L., was 13 years old when local firefighters (all in their 20s) started to repeatedly rape and sexually abuse her. She eventually reported them to the authorities and they were charged for gang rape and sexual assault. The accused were convicted of sexual assault of a minor under 15 occurring without violence, coercion or threat, but the more serious charges were dropped. The Court of Cassation confirmed the classification of the crime, holding that the applicant had had the necessary understanding to be capable of consenting to the acts complained of, particularly once she reached the age of 14 years old.
The applicant in the second case was raped and sexually abused while intoxicated by two adult men when she was 14 years old. The investigations focused on sexual assault without violence, coercion or threat against a minor under 15. The Criminal Court re classified the offences as aggravated rape, but the accused were eventually acquitted.
The applicant in the third case reported several acts of non-consensual anal penetration when she was 16 by an acquaintance, who was 18 at the time of the events. The public prosecutor decided to discontinue the investigation because of insufficient proof of intent by the accused. The applicant appealed, but the Court of Appeal confirmed the discontinuation of the proceedings, as no violence, threat or coercion had been used.
The applicants complained under Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights that French law did not provide effective protection against rape, and that their young age at the time of the events, which had rendered them particularly vulnerable, had not been taken into account. Moreover, the first applicant complained under Article 14 of the Convention that she had been exposed to secondary victimisation, sexist stereotypes and victim-blaming attitudes by the authorities dealing with her case.
The Court, unanimously, found a violation of Articles 3 and 8 on account of the insufficiency of the French criminal law system in the area of rape and sexual violence. It referred to its previous case-law in M.C. v. Bulgaria (2003), M.G.C. v. Romania (2016), J.L. v. Italy (2021) and Vuckovic v. Croatia (2023), and underlined that the positive obligation to adopt criminal law provisions that effectively punish all non-consensual sexual acts had to be interpreted in the light of the Istanbul Convention. Any rigid approach to the prosecution of sexual offences, which would consist, for example, in requiring proof of physical resistance in all cases, risked leading to impunity for the perpetrators of certain types of rape and consequently compromising the effective protection of the sexual autonomy of the individual. While the absence of consent was often taken into consideration in case-law of French courts, the French Criminal Code did not contain any express reference to “consent”.
In relation to the first applicant, the Court noted in particular the moralising and guilt-inducing statements by some public officials and judges towards her, which propagated gender stereotypes and were capable of impairing victims’ confidence in the justice system. The Court therefore found that she had suffered discrimination on the basis of her sex (violation of Article 14 ECHR).
Concerning the applicant in the second application, the Court noted that the domestic courts had not assessed the effect of the state of intoxication of the applicant on her ability to consent to the sexual acts.
In the third case, the Court observed that the assessment of the case was mainly based on the statement by the accused, without attaching the same weight to the applicant’s statements and without evaluating them in the context of the situation, nor had her state of intoxication been taken into account. Moreover, the Court denounced the gender stereotypes used by the appeal courts and their lack of understanding of possible reactions of rape victims, particularly when they were of a young age.
The Court also lamented the length of the proceedings in the first and third case, which lasted almost 12 years, and almost 9 years, respectively, demonstrating a lack of due care in the conduct of the criminal proceedings.
In conclusion, the Court held that the domestic courts had not duly assessed the circumstances surrounding the rapes of the three minors, nor had they sufficiently evaluated their ability to understand the situations or give their consent, in the vulnerable states they found themselves. The Court considered that, given the legal framework in place at the time and the way in which it had been applied, the respondent State had failed to fulfil its duty, in the light of the requirements of the Court’s case-law and international standards, to apply, in practice, a criminal-law system capable of punishing non-consensual sexual acts.
Judgment (in French only)
