A comprehensive law against sexual violence. This is what a hundred personalities, including many actresses, are asking in a column published this Tuesday, seven years after the launch of the #Metoo movement. “There are 100 of us, but in reality there are hundreds of thousands of us”write the signatories of this text accompanied by a petition initiated by The Women’s Foundation, #Metoomedia and actress Anna Mouglalis and published a few hours before the opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival.
“Our #Metoo speeches revealed a reality shrouded in denial: sexist and sexual violence is systemic, not exceptional. However (…) who really listens to us?”, we can read in the column also published on the website of the daily Le Monde. Among the signatories are the actresses Isabelle Adjani, Charlotte Arnould, Emmanuelle Béart, Juliette Binoche, Emma de Caunes, Judith Godrèche, Isild Le Besco, Muriel Robin, the authors Leila Slimani, Christine Angot, Vanessa Springora and the actor Philippe Torreton.
“For seven years, we have been speaking for ourselves and for all the women, men and children who cannot do so”they write. “We are not numbers: women and men from all professional backgrounds, we come together to demand a comprehensive law against sexual and gender-based violence, ambitious and equipped with resources. Because despite the courage of the victims, there is impunity who grows.”
The signatories judge in particular “unacceptable” that the rate of dismissal of complaints for sexual violence “reached the crazy rate of 94% in 2022” and warn that they no longer accept “announcement effects without follow-up”.
“Abysmal delay”
“Adding just the word consent to the law will not make up for France’s abysmal delay in this area”, they estimate, in reference to the commitment made in March by Emmanuel Macron. The signatories request “a comprehensive law which will clarify, among other things, the definition of rape and consent, introduce that of incest, judge serial rapists for all known rapes, and extend protection orders to rape victims , to facilitate the collection of evidence, to create specialized brigades, to prohibit investigations into the sexual past of victims”.
This law must also allow “immediate and free access to psycho-traumatology care, to finally provide the financial means for this public policy and the associations that implement it”they add.
The publication of this petition comes after several months of revelations about sexual violence committed in the cinema industry, with testimonies in particular from Judith Godrèche and Isild Le Besco.
“Since 2017, not much has actually happened in the fight against sexual violence”estimates Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women’s Foundation, to AFP. “The increase in complaints has seen at the same time an increase in rankings without follow-up, #Metoo is being sent to the trash”.
“If we do not resolve the problem of resources for investigations, for the courts, the integration of the notion of consent in the definition of rape will not change anything, we need the political will to really resolve the problem of impunity”she adds. “But at the moment, there is no such political will.”
