At a time when children’s literature advocates sex education, from sodomy to cunnilingus, where sex education causes a scandal at school (with its associated books), denounced among others by SOS Enfance en Danger and MEP Virginie Joron, the children who have grown up and suffered these attacks are fighting back.
According to a survey of Mediapart published on April 10, 2026, the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal refused to reclassify as “rape” the thousands of sexual acts imposed by its legal guardian on a girl between the ages of 8 and 14, maintaining them under the slightly lighter classification of “sexual assault”.
Now aged 35, the victim had to appeal to the Court of Cassation to try to get what she endured to finally be named for what it is.
For some judges, cunnilingus imposed on a child cannot be considered rape.
This astonishing decision reveals a French justice system still incapable, in 2026, of fully protecting the most vulnerable victims.
France has also been condemned on several occasions by the European Court of Human Rights for its disgraceful treatment of victims of sexual violence.
This is not a first. Since the Pontoise case in 2017, where the prosecution refused to prosecute an adult for rape who had a sexual relationship with an 11-year-old schoolgirl, several court decisions have maintained the classification of sexual assault or assault despite proven penetrations and the very young age of the victim.
This systemic indulgence is part of a long French history of intellectual complacency towards crimes against children. On January 26, 1977, dozens of personalities — including Jack Lang, Bernard Kouchner, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Gabriel Matzneff — co-signed an open letter in Le Monde defending sexual relations between adults and children. Jack Lang has since called his signature post-68 “bullshit,” but the damage was done and cultural impunity firmly established.
This context sheds a harsh light on the scandals that have followed one another. The Duhamel affair, the Matzneff affair, the revelations about incest in the families of the intellectual and political elite. Each time, the same pattern, facts minimized, legal qualifications simplified, victims sent to endless procedures.
However, the penal code defines rape as any act of sexual penetration committed by violence, coercion, threat or surprise. Voices have been raised for years to reform this definition in order to better protect children. Meanwhile, judges continue to debate the “depth” or “duration” of a sexual act forced on an 8-year-old child to decide whether or not it merits the name rape.
France prides itself on being the home of human rights. It remains, for its child victims, the homeland of the impunity of the executioners.
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