The French government is set to ban incest for the first time since 1791 even if both parties are over the age of 18 years.
Incest is legal in France for those over 18, but the government is planning to criminalise the practice.
“Whatever the age, you don’t have sexual relations with your father, your son or your daughter,” said Secretary of State for Children, Adrien Taquet in an interview with AFP.
“It is not a question of age, it is not a question of consenting adults. We are fighting against incest. The signals must be clear,” Taquet explained
According to the secretary of state, "The law is to issue clear prohibitions in society: incest is prohibited."
Crimes including incest, blasphemy and sodomy were removed from the statute book in 1791, following the French Revolution in a bid to end all Christian-inspired morality introduced by the old regime.
Welcoming the statement, Chairman of Child Protection Charity said it was important to ensure that the practice was 'legally forbidden' as much as it was 'socially forbidden.'
Last year, the issue came to the fore when Olivier Duhamel, one of the most prominent French political commentators, was accused of sexually abusing his own stepson.
The 70-year-old's stepdaughter Camille Kouchner had accused him of abusing her twin brother for two years when he was 14.
Though Duhamel admitted the allegations were true, he was never prosecuted because of the French statute of limitations.
As the allegations came to the surface lastr year, President Emmanuel Macron called for tightening of the regulations prompting legislators to prohibit sexual relations with a relative under the age of 18.
French government incest Plans to ban ties (family sex) have been announced. In France, except for children, incest currently has a legal status. French Minister of State for Child Protection, Adrian Taquet, said the government intended to criminalize such relationships, even if the two were over the age of 18. Incest refers to illegal sex between members of the same family (such as brothers and sisters). It is also called incest.
Minister said – you cannot have sex with your blood
The new law is meant to issue clear restrictions in society, news agency AFP quoted Taquet as saying. Incest is not acceptable in the society… no matter what the age. You cannot have sex with your father, your son or your daughter. It is not a question of age, it is not a question of consent of adults. We are fighting against malpractice. The signs should be clear.
The age limit of 18 years will also be reviewed
He said the 18-year limit for malpractice would be reviewed. Cousins would still be allowed to marry under the changed rules. He did not provide any clarification on whether the proposed law would extend to stepfamilies.
France changed the law in 1791
Laurent Boet, president of child protection charity Les Papillons, welcomed the move, saying incest should be legally banned, as it was already socially prohibited. In 1791, incest, blasphemy and sodomy were removed from the French penal code as crimes. They believe that if there is no victim then it is not a crime.
France has changed the anti-rape law
Last year, France made major changes to its anti-rape law. Since then, having sex with a girl under the age of 15 is being treated as rape. France claims that after this change in the law, it will now be easier to punish in cases of sexual abuse of girls. In France, after increasing cases of rape and sexual abuse of girls, there was pressure from the public and due to this the government was forced to take this step.
French clergy sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years, a major investigation released on Tuesday found, and its authors said the Catholic Church had turned a blind eye to the 'scourge' for too long.
The church had shown "deep, total and even cruel indifference for years," protecting itself rather than the victims of what was systemic abuse, said Jean-Marc Sauve, head of the commission that compiled the report.
Most of the victims were boys, he said, many of them aged between 10 and 13.
"Faced with this scourge, for a very long time the Catholic Church's immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse," the report said.
The revelations, which showed the problem in France was more widespread than previously thought, were the latest to rock the Roman Catholic Church, after a series of sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children.
Pope Francis expressed gratitude towards victims for having the courage to come forward.
"First of all his thoughts go to the victims, with great sorrow, for their wounds," a Vatican statement said. "(His thoughts go to) the Church of France, so that, in the awareness of this terrible reality ... it may embark on a path of redemption."
The head of the French conference of bishops, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said the church was shamed.
Calling the report a "bombshell", he asked for forgiveness and promised to act.
The commission was established by Catholic bishops in France at the end of 2018 to shed light on abuses and restore public confidence in the church at a time of dwindling congregations.
It has worked independently from the church. Sauve said the problem was still there.
He added that the church had until the 2000s shown complete indifference to victims and that it only started to really change its attitude in 2015-2016.
Church urged to reform
The Catholic Church's teaching on subjects such as sexuality, obedience and the sanctity of the priesthood helped create blind spots which allowed sexual abuse by clergy to happen, Sauve said, adding that the church needed to reform the way it approached those issues to rebuild trust with society.
The church must take responsibility for what happened, the commission said, and ensure reports of abuse were transmitted to judicial authorities. It must also provide victims with adequate financial compensation, "which, despite not being sufficient (to address the trauma from sexual abuse), is nonetheless indispensable as it completes the recognition process".
The height of the abuse was 1950-1970, the commission said in its report, with an apparent resurgence in cases in the early 1990s.
Many cases are covered by the statute of limitations, but state prosecutors have been alerted of more recent cases and the commission stressed that the church should provide compensation no matter when an offence was committed. It added a list of recommendations that included systematically checking the criminal record of any person assigned by the Church to be in regular contact with children or vulnerable people, and providing priests with adequate training.
Sauve said the commission itself had identified around 2,700 victims through a call for testimony, and thousands more had been found in archives.
A wide-ranging study by research and polling groups estimated there had been around 216,000 victims, and the number could rise to 330,000 when including abuse by lay members.
Sauve said the scale was unprecedented. There have been around 2,900-3,200 suspected paedophiles in the French church over the last 70 years, he added.
'Disgrace’
Francois Devaux, a victim of church abuse and founder of victims' association La Parole Liberee, told church representatives at the report's presentation: "You are a disgrace to our humanity. In this hell there have been abominable mass crimes ... but there has been even worse, betrayal of trust, betrayal of morale, betrayal of children."
He accused the Church of cowardice and thanked the commission, saying the report would prove a turning point: "You finally bring victims an institutional recognition of the responsibility of the church."
The French findings come a year after Britain said the Catholic Church had received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sex abuse in England and Wales between 1970 and 2015, and that there had been more than 100 reported allegations a year since 2016.
In June, the pope said the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis was a worldwide "catastrophe".
Since his election in 2013, he has taken a series of steps aimed at wiping out sexual abuse of minors by clerics.
This year, he issued the most extensive revision to Catholic Church law in four decades, insisting that bishops take action against clerics who abuse minors and vulnerable adults. But critics accuse Francis of responding too slowly to the sex abuse scandals, of failing to empathise with victims and of blindly believing the word of his fellow clergy.