## 23 Rape (F01)

I could have used different words, such as 'sexual harassment', 'sexism' or 'gender'. There are several cases like this in France. The most notable case involves a young girl named Lyhanna who was murdered by a man. This man had previously been accused of raping and sexually assaulting several young girls, but was never convicted or even questioned about the latest complaints. The police and justice system are accused of laxity in these types of cases, as well as in rape cases in general. At the same time, the famous singer Patrick Bruel has been accused by 30 women of rape, sexual violence and sexual harassment since 1989. But it took a more high-profile woman to prompt a reaction from the justice system. He has now been charged in connection with these cases, but is not in jail at the moment.

France has too few judges per capita, and the police are still sexist and poorly trained to respond to rape cases, especially those involving children. Recently, a law was passed to protect children at school from violence, but the right and far right voted against an article that would have allowed the secrecy of confession in such cases to be removed. There is still a long way to go on this subject in France. Fortunately, neither I nor my wife have ever been victims of such violence. However, we now know that every three minutes, a child becomes a victim of violence, rape or incest. 

I am still scarred by an incident involving one of these monsters. It was a man at a dog shelter. He was the partner of the woman who ran the shelter. She didn't know that he had been convicted of child abuse. When I met them, I had a bad feeling about him. I found him to be violent towards the shelter dogs, even verbally. But I could never have imagined that he was a paedophile... and worse. He was also an animal rapist. The poor woman was really traumatised by this case. The shelter was closed, and the dogs were rescued by other organisations. He was convicted again and I don't know anything about him now. Sometimes I think that perhaps someone I know, someone at work, could be such a monster with children or women.

But when I think about my own upbringing, I don't remember any conversations or warnings about how to behave around women. I just remember being shocked as a child when boys bothered girls and tried to see their underwear. I felt almost alone and abnormal for rebelling against it. When I was at secondary school, I also heard a story about a girl who was allegedly assaulted in the bathroom. I didn't know her, and I never heard anything more about it. The only rape or sexual aggression I heard about occurred when I was in the army for my military service: One evening during manoeuvres, things seem to have got out of hand between some non-commissioned officers and one of the few women in the company. I'd rather spare you the details that came to light, but we never saw her again. The military did everything they could to cover it up.

Society is violent towards women and children every day in France. It's a question of education and societal acceptance; we can clearly see this in the reactions of older people. The justice system and the police take all of this lightly or view it as tolerated normality. And they can't work on all the cases because of too few people working on it. This week, I heard information about what has been done in Spain, Sweden and some other countries. I could have talked about other forms of intimate violence and femicides that continue to occur every day. Sometimes it's not so easy to see this as a continuation of violence against women. It's also about issues such as ageing, illness and assisted suicide. Behind the statistics, there are people.

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