“In the 21st century, how can you imagine that there is an equal relationship between someone who is 24 years old and someone who is 13?”, asks the honorary magistrate and former president of the Bobigny children’s court, in Seine-Saint-Denis, Jean-Pierre Rosenczveig, Tuesday, December 14 on franceinfo, while the swimmer Yannick Agnel explained that the young woman who accused of rape when she was 13 and he was 24 consenting, according to the Mulhouse prosecutor. Yannick Agnel was indicted for rape and sexual assault on a 15-year-old minor.
franceinfo: Yannick Agnel affirms that the woman who accuses him of rape was consenting, whereas she was 13 years old at the time of the facts. Is this a common argument for men accused of sexual violence?
Jean-Pierre Rosenczveig: It is classic and it is common for the sexual predator, the pedophile, to hide behind the fact that, from his point of view, the victim was consenting. In order for him to be sentenced, he must have been aware of having exercised coercion, but told her that he did not exert coercion since she agreed. The question is whether a 13-year-old kid can freely give consent. In the 21st century, how can we imagine that there is an equal relationship between someone who is 24 years old and someone who is 13? How can you imagine that a 24-year-old character could not be aware that there is something wrong? It is not entirely normal, and if it is not normal, it is not far from illegal. It is even frankly illegal. This is the whole debate on classic rape, which requires that there not only be an act of penetration, but that the person concerned was aware of having exerted pressure, coercion, coercion on the other. Sexual predators hide behind the weaknesses of the law: prescription and consent. It must be shown that there was violence, coercion, surprise or threat. Yannick Agnel will be tried on the basis of the old law and if there was no rape under this law, he will be prosecuted for sexual assault by an adult against someone. ‘one who was less than 15 years old. The penalties incurred are vastly different. Under the old law, for a rape committed on a minor of 15 years, the penalty incurred is 20 years of criminal imprisonment. For sexual abuse, the penalty is 7 years imprisonment.
Precisely, the law changed at the beginning of the year 2021. From that date, all sexual relations with penetration of an adult with a minor of 15 years is legally considered as rape. Why did you change the law?
We were shocked in 2017 to see that a public prosecutor doubted that an Assize Court could convict a 28-year-old man who had had full sexual intercourse with an 11-year-old girl for rape, because he believed fail to prove that there had been violence. It shocked public opinion. A few months later, he seized the criminal court which moreover considered itself incompetent because it was a crime from his point of view, it was not a misdemeanor. And then, there is another situation which materialized in Melun: the Assize Court, with popular jurors, again estimated that for a girl who was 11 years old, the man who was 18 years old, who had had sexual intercourse with her, had not necessarily exerted any coercion, which means that the child was consenting. We had to get out of this debate on consent, to focus on the objective offense. Someone who is over 18 and having sex who is under 15 is now a crime. The stake is that it is not only a misdemeanor but a crime, that one comes to say you do not touch the child if you are over 18 years old.
The victim waited five years before denouncing the facts. Why is it so difficult to say this earlier?
Sometimes it even takes a lot longer than that. I was a member of the commission on sexual violence in the Church, we heard from men, women who were 70 years old and who only now could reveal, assume the fact that 60 years ago they had been victims of sexual violence. We are buried within ourselves something that we do not want to see and that we consider to have been extremely violent. And then, at one point, it reappears and we dare to speak.