“To say that we did not realize that the victim or the complainant was not consenting is no longer audible”, said Monday, December 13 on franceinfo Anne Bouillon, lawyer at the Nantes bar and specialist in violence against women, while the swimmer Yannick Agnel was indicted for rape and sexual assault on a 13-year-old minor.
If he recognized the “materiality” facts, the French swimming star denies having exercised any “constraint”, explained Monday, December 13 the prosecutor of Mulhouse. “At 13, we are a child, and the complainant”, Naome Horter, “was a kid when she had this relationship in 2016 with this athlete”, insists Anne Bouillon.
According to the lawyer, the prosecutor of Mulhouse “seems to be inspired by the law of April 21” 2021, known as the “Schiappa law”, aimed at protecting minors from sexual crimes and offenses and from incest. “A 15-year-old minor cannot consent to an act of sexual intercourse with an adult, except in very specific and specific circumstances”, explains the lawyer. It evokes the “Romeo and Juliet clause which states that, if the age difference is less than five years, the offense is not characterized”.
In the case of Yannick Agnel, “if it is this law which were to apply, then it would fall under the scope of the offense and the rape”. For Anne Bouillon, this law “is not retroactive”, but there was “precedents”, she says.
“We can no longer be satisfied with the idea of an adult having sex with a child”
Anne Bouillonto franceinfo
The lawyer adds that “the offense of non-denunciation has seen its limitation period extended from ten to twenty years”. That constitutes “a very strong incentive not to tolerate any more and to take up this kind of situation, because minors must be protected in the sporting environment, but also in all the environments where adults exercise their power. We can think of the ecclesiastical environment , in education or in the cinema “, adds Anne Bouillon, believing that “The news abounds of these young girls and these young women who free their word and who say that they underwent this. For the future, it is bearer of hope. These behaviors are collectively denounced”.