Published:
5 Nov 2022 17:24 GMT
The case sparked a debate in the country about sexuality with minors and led to the enactment of a law in 2021 that makes any sexual act with a person under 15 years of age a rape.
A 33-year-old man who had sex with an 11-year-old girl in 2017 – when he was 28 – was sentenced this Friday to eight years in prison in France. It is a case that has since generated public outrage because in a first trial —more than four years ago— it was not considered that there was rape and the Justice concluded that it was a consensual relationship.
On this occasion, after a closed-door trial without a jury and three days of hearing, five magistrates accused Serinte Sangare of rape for “moral duress and surprise”. During the verdict, which was pronounced in public, it was determined that he had abused the “vulnerability” of the victim, who “did not have sufficient maturity or discernment to consent to sexual relations,” the newspaper reported. The Figaro.
Sangare was free at the time of the verdict and had not served preventive detention. In addition to the eight years he must serve behind bars, banned from working with children for 10 years.
The facts
The assault took place in April 2017 after the defendant invited the schoolgirl – whom he had met two weeks earlier – to his apartment in the town of Montmagny (Val d’Oise). At the man’s request, the girl performed oral sex on him under the stairs of the building and later a “penetration without violence” took place at her home. Later, the girl told her parents what had happened and they went to a police station to report him for sexual abuse.
The person involved insisted during the interrogation that the girl had given her consent, that she had no idea that she was only 11 years old and that she thought she was a young woman of 16 or 18. However, the victim denied these statements and assured that she had He said his age and even the year he was in school.
historical case
The so-called Pontoise case sparked a debate in the country about sexuality in minors and led to the enactment of a law in 2021 that set the minimum age of consent at 15 years. Thus, any sexual act with a person of lesser age automatically becomes a violation.
Sangare had been tried in early 2018 under old French law that qualified a sexual relationship under the age of 15 as rape only if there was violence or threat of violence. In this context, the prosecutor decided that, because the girl had not expressly said no, she had thereby given her consent and that the defendant should face a lesser charge of sexual assault. The court declared itself incompetent and, in the context of the criticism and collective anger that this event aroused, requested a new investigation.
