Something I’ve learned from watching true crime shows is that it’s really hard to prove lack of consent
IANAL. <-- disclaimer.
Consent is not part of the definition of rape in France.
Currently it is defined as any sexual penetration act perpetrated by « violence, coercion, threat or surprise ». Court have also ruled that trickery falls under “surprise”. So I can’t tell you I’m a astronaut to get laid either (HIMYM was basically a TV show about a guy in a suit raping women). This was ruled during a case where a serial rapist used a model’s picture on dating apps to invite woman to have sex in the dark with a blindfold at his place. Turned out he was a 60y old average dude and not Chris Hemsworth and the charge were initially dropped before reaching our higher level of court. (Yes that case was fucked up on too many level…)
There’s currently a long standing debate in France, which predate that trial, to include consent as part of the legal definition and a commission has been mandated earlier in the year to study the issue. It’s probably not going to happen for a while since we have other political issue at the moment and the right wingers currently clinging to power aren’t exactly feminists.
The pro argument are relatively simple to imagine. Rape is when someone does sex stuff you don’t want. So it seems to make perfect sense. That’s what the Belgian law has and what the EU is pushing.
From what I understand from the people against it, it is more technical. In our legal system, you need to prove that a crime has been committed (innocent until proven guilty) but somehow they think it would shift to burden of proof to the defense because the only way to include it in our legal system would be to assume “non consent” by default and the accused would then have to prove consent.
The other anti argument is that absence of consent is impossible to prove and that the current definition is build to cover the case of non consent with provable definition.
There are probably as many lawyers on both side of the argument and as I said, I am not one of them, law is complicated I’m not qualified to have an opinion on what would be better.
Either way I’m just not really sure adding consent would change most of the outcomes as the main issue to convict is usually the lack of proof and witnesses and most cases ending up deadlocked by a “he said - she said” scenario.
From a purely legal standpoint “consent” isn’t required in that case. It falls under “surprise”.
