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The abuse of a minor committed by a famous political scientist who shook France declared prescribed

2021-06-16T20:25:01.188Z


Olivier Duhamel will not have to answer to justice, but the case has opened the debate on incest and promoted a legal change: setting the age of sexual consent at 15 years


The well-known French political scientist Olivier Duhamel will not have to answer to justice for the sexual abuse he committed against his teenage stepson in the late 1980s and that his twin sister, Camille Kouchner, revealed in a book,

The Big Family

, that it shook all of France earlier this year.

The Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz, announced this Monday that the case, which has reopened the debate on incest and caused new advances in French law, is closed due to the prescription of the events, which occurred three decades ago.

More information

  • France will set the age of sexual consent at 15 years

  • The abuse of a minor that shakes the French intellectual elite

However, Heitz has made it clear in a statement that only the preliminary investigation for alleged "rape of a person under 15 years of age by a person exercising authority", opened on January 5, as soon as the case was known, is archived, due to the "prescription of public action". But, he stresses, "if the time set by law had not been exceeded," the facts "revealed or reported" during the investigations "would have led to a procedure" by the prosecutor's office that he directs. That is, Duhamel, 71, who, during an interrogation in mid-April, finally acknowledged having abused his wife's son when he was 13 years old, would have sat on the dock. The victim, known only by the fictitious name "Victor" and who is currently 45 years old,He decided to file a complaint against his stepfather after being called to testify at the end of January, in the framework of the investigation now closed. None of those involved has spoken out for the moment on the file of the case.

Since 2018, the statute of limitations for sexual abuse against minors is set at 30 years from the age of majority of the victim. But the law has no retroactive effect, so it cannot be applied to Duhamel, a leading figure of the French intellectual elite who, as a result of the appearance of the book, resigned, among others, from the presidency of the National Science Foundation Policies controlled by the prestigious Sciences Po school, where a good part of the leaders and intellectuals of France come from. Due to the scandal, the director of Sciences Po Paris, Frédéric Mion, and the former socialist minister Elisabeth Guigou, who had just been appointed president of a independent commission that, precisely,should investigate incest and other abuses against minors.

Despite the shelving of the case, the precision made by the prosecutor in his statement represents a change in itself in a country where incest was until recently a great taboo despite the fact that, according to a survey last year, 10% of the French say they were victims of sexual abuse by a relative when they were minors: after the publication of

La Familia Grande

, Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti ordered all prosecutors in the country to "systematically" open an investigation in the event of a complaint of sexual abuse against a minor, even if it is believed that the facts - as in the case Duhamel - have already prescribed. The objective is, on the one hand, to inquire if there could be other victims whose cases have not yet prescribed, who could take the step and file a complaint that reaches a successful conclusion, but also to allow the investigated person to “explain themselves about the accusations in against him ”to guarantee his presumption of innocence, said Dupond-Moretti in an internal note revealed by several French media. The minister also asked that, in mediated cases like this, it be announced, if it was decided to close the investigation, if this is due solely to its prescription or due to lack of evidence.

A graffiti photographed in the streets of Paris in January reads "Duhamel and the rest of you will never be at peace." Francois Mori / AP

Due to the high visibility of those involved beyond Duhamel — Camille and her brother are children of the famous former socialist minister and co-founder of Doctors Without Borders Bernard Kouchner and of the political scientist and “icon of the left” Évelyne Pisier, whose sister and aunt of The Kouchner twins were Buñuel Marie-France Pisier's actress and muse — this case has made a profound impact in France.

In addition to unleashing a

MeToo

of incest, with the denunciation of thousands of cases on social networks, it has also given a definitive boost to the legislation on minors, leading to the approval of a minimum age of consent in April, something This was not achieved in the last reform of the law against sexual violence, which dates from 2018. According to the new regulations, the age of consent is set at 15 years, although in cases of incest it rises to 18.

After the immense echo of

La Familia Grande,

French President Emmanuel Macron promised that victims of this type of abuse against minors "will never be alone again." In addition to announcing reforms to the law, he announced that primary and secondary school students must attend, within the framework of the compulsory medical visits for all these students, to two appointments, one in each cycle, of "diagnosis and prevention of sexual violence against minors ”. He also said that the State will be in charge of "accompanying the reconstruction" of the victims, assuming the expenses of child psychologists for victims of sexual violence against minors.

Source: elparis

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