PARIS (AP) — The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sided Thursday with three women who said they were raped when they were aged 13, 14 and 16 and argued that French authorities did not do enough to protect them.
The ruling will likely fuel the debate on the inclusion of consent in the law for sexual offences that was reignited by the drugging-and-rape trial that riveted France last year. France has taken steps to toughen punishment for rape and sexual misconduct, including a 2021 law stating that a child under age 15 cannot consent to sex with an adult, but the notion of consent has yet to be introduced into the legal definition of rape.
In all three cases examined by the ECHR, the applicants argued that their age and their vulnerability at the time should have been better considered.
The ECHR ruled that the people in charge of investigating the alleged crimes and French courts did not do enough to protect the women who said they were raped. In two of the cases, the Court said that criminal proceedings were not handled quickly or with due care.
The court condemned France for violating articles of the European Convention on Human Rights that prohibit torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, as well as the women’s right to respect for their private lives.
"The Court considered that the domestic courts had not properly assessed the impact of all the circumstances surrounding the events; nor had they taken sufficient account, in evaluating whether the applicants had been capable of understanding and of giving consent, of the particularly vulnerable situations in which they had found themselves, particularly in view of their ages," the ECHR said.
The court also noted the “lack of promptness and diligence in the conduct of the criminal proceedings” in two of the three cases.
The first concerned a teenager who complained that she had been raped in 2009 by two 21-year-old men who were firefighters stationed in barracks near her home. The girl described herself as psychologically fragile and bullied at school, which had led to her taking medication and being hospitalized in a children’s psychiatric ward on several occasions.
She stated that she had sexual relations with one of the firefighters on several occasions. She added that her contact details had subsequently been “circulated” among other firefighters at several fire stations, who had contacted her by text or Facebook.
A second plaintiff reported being raped by two men aged 21 and 29 when she was 14. The third woman reported being raped at the age of 16 by an 18-year-old man at her home after a party.
In the case of the girl who said she was assaulted by firefighters, the court also found that French authorities failed “to protect the applicant’s dignity, by permitting the use of moralizing and guilt-inducing statements, which propagated gender stereotypes and were capable of impairing victims’ confidence in the justice system.”
The court said that it was not asked to decide if the people who were accused of committing the crimes were guilty, and that its findings cannot be seen as an opinion on the guilt of the accused in the respective cases.
The way rapes are defined and prosecuted in criminal law still varies widely across Europe. Although some countries use consent-based definitions, many others still require the use of force, or threat, to mete out punishment.
French law considers that a rape can be considered to have occurred when “an act of sexual penetration or an oral-genital act is committed on a person, with violence, coercion, threat or surprise” or on a minor under 15 when the adult perpetrator is at least 5 years older.
FILE - View of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, eastern France, on Sept. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias, File)
After a wildfire decimated a California high school’s newsroom, destroying its cameras, computers and archived newspapers spanning six decades, one of the first offers of help that its journalism adviser received came from the other side of the country.
Claire Smith, founding executive director of Temple University's sports media center, had known Lisa Nehus Saxon since they helped carve out a place for women journalists in Major League Baseball more than 40 years ago. They’d supported each other through the days of being barred from locker rooms, and now with much of Palisades Charter High School damaged, Smith wanted to be there for her friend again.
“I just thought, ‘What can we do? How can we help with healing?’” Smith said.
Earlier this week, she traveled from Philadelphia to deliver the result of that offer: a university paper featuring the high school students’ articles.
Across nearly a dozen pages, the insert showcased articles on price gouging in the rental market after the wildfire and the school returning to in-person lessons, along with poignant firsthand accounts of losing everything to the fire. There were also poems and hand-drawn pictures by students from Pasadena Rosebud Academy, a transitional kindergarten through eighth-grade school in Altadena, California, that was destroyed in the fire.
Wildfires in January ravaged the Los Angeles area, wiping out nearly 17,000 structures including homes, schools, businesses and places of worship.
The Palisades high school, made up of about 3,000 students in Los Angeles, saw about 40% of its campus damaged and had to move temporarily into an old Sears building. Nehus Saxon estimated that around a quarter of its newspaper staff members lost their homes, with some forced to move out of the community and switch schools.
This project, she and Smith said, was a way to give students a project to focus on after the tragedy while also providing them a place to tell a larger audience the experience of their community.
Smith said she thought the project would be healing for the students “but also give them something that they could hold in their hands and, when they grow up, show their children and grandchildren."
Inside a basement classroom in Santa Monica on Wednesday, Smith and Samuel O’Neal, The Temple News’ editor-in-chief, handed out the papers to the high school staff.
It was the first time they had seen their Tideline articles in print, as the paper had moved online years ago due to the cost.
Kate Swain, 18, a co-editor-in-chief for the paper, said it felt surreal to finally flip through the printed pages.
“Because of everything that we’ve gone through together, everything that we’ve had to persevere through and everyone’s had all these personal things that they’ve been dealing with," she said. "And yet simultaneously, we’ve been pouring all this time and energy and all of our passion for journalism into writing these articles.”
Gigi Appelbaum, 18, a co-editor-in-chief of the paper who lost her home in the fire, said the project felt especially distinct because it involved people thousands of miles away.
“The fact that people from across the country are aware of what's going on with us and emphasize with our situation and want to get our voices out there, it’s really special,” said Appelbaum, who has been on the paper for four years.
One of the things she lost in the fire was a box filled with important cards and messages. She said she plans to store her copy in a new box as she works to restart the collection.
Smith and Nehus Saxon met in 1983 during a game between the Angels and Yankees in Anaheim, California. Nehus Saxon said she walked over to Smith to introduce herself and found her hustling to meet a deadline.
“Who knew that little introduction would blossom into this,” said Nehus Saxon.
In the years since, they’ve traveled to London together for Major League Baseball’s first games in Europe, and they cried together in 2017 as Smith became the first woman to win the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Career Excellence Award.
“We don’t talk every week,” Nehus Saxon said. “Sometimes we can go, you know, months and months without talking. But all we have to do is send each other a text message and we know the other will be there immediately.”
That bond was made all the more clear when Nehus Saxon heard from Smith as fire engulfed her community. Her home was only three blocks from the school. While it survived the blaze, it’s filled with led laden ash and may not be safe to live in for years.
But with the help of Smith, she and her students have been able to move forward and produce the final edition of the school year. After the papers were handed out, Nehus Saxon kept one for the school's archive.
“When you’ve lost everything you’ve got to start somewhere,” Smith said.
Copies of Tideline, Palisades High School's student newspaper, are placed on a table in their newsroom, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Samuel O'Neal, left, editor-in-chief of Temple News, shows a copy of his school's publication to Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts during a visit to Dodger Stadium, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Jayne Kamin-Oncea)
Members of of the Palisades High School newspaper staff, from left to right, Cloé Nourparvar, Gigi Appelbaum, and Kate Swain, hold a copy of the school's publication, which was printed in Philadelphia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Claire Smith, founding executive director of Temple University's sports media center, center, and Samuel O'Neal, left, editor-in-chief of the Temple News, deliver copies of the Palisades High School newspaper to staff, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Staff members of Tideline, Palisades High School's newspaper, Sophia Masserat, left, and Eve Keller read a copy of the publication, freshly delivered from Philadelphia, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Members of Tideline, the student newspaper, pose for a group photo showing the publication at the interim location for Palisades High School Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
