PARIS—France’s National Assembly voted on July 21 to create a life sentence for serial rapes committed against children younger than age 15, reversing a vote four days earlier in which left-wing deputies had removed the measure from the government’s child protection bill.
Deputies adopted the disputed article in a 258–84 vote, then passed the bill as a whole 378–7.
The provision, pushed by the government after the Lyhanna case, was opposed by the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, by the Greens, and by the Socialists.
It was defended by the conservative Les Républicains (LR) and by the right-wing National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen.
Article 11 creates a new sentence of criminal life imprisonment for rape committed against a minor younger than age 15 when the offense is combined with one or more other rapes against other victims. It also sets a 30-year sentence when one victim of serial rapes is aged 15 to 18.
Left and Right Clash
On July 17, left-wing deputies, more heavily mobilized in the chamber than their opponents, defeated the article 41–37, denouncing a measure that they said was repressive and masked insufficient funding for investigations, prevention, and victim support.
Aurore Bergé, the French minister for equality between women and men, requested a second vote. She cited the case of Joël Le Scouarnec, the retired surgeon sentenced in 2025 for sexual crimes against hundreds of patients, most of them children. In such a case, she said, life imprisonment could not be sought, and the maximum sentence was 20 years.
In their deletion amendment, LFI deputies in the National Assembly wrote that the provision belonged “more to penal populism than to a genuine policy” against sexual violence committed against children.
Criminal law already punishes aggravated rape heavily, they argued, and the scandal is “not the insufficiency of the penalties incurred” but “the impunity” of sexual violence against children and women. Priority, they said, should go to recruiting magistrates, investigators, and court clerks.
A second deletion amendment, filed by Deputy Arnaud Bonnet for the ecologist and social group, called the measure a “penal escalation” that “has no deterrent effect” and risks producing what French law calls dry releases, referring to prisoners freed at the end of their terms without support or judicial supervision. The group called for investment in prevention instead. Both amendments had been rejected earlier the same day in a 56–36 vote.
Aude Mirkovic, a French lecturer in private law at the University of Evry and spokeswoman for the child protection association Lawyers for Children, told The Epoch Times that the shortage of judicial resources is real but does not explain the decisions that she sees.
“The argument about resources does not hold,” Mirkovic said, pointing to reported rapes of minors that lead to no judicial action, as in the Lyhanna case, while other prosecutions, she said, move forward with considerable force.
The RN had accused LFI and the Greens on X of refusing life imprisonment for child rapists, writing that the two amendments spoke for themselves.
“Your priority is to prepare the release of predators; ours is to guarantee that no child crosses his path again,” RN Deputy Sophie Blanc told the left.
Meanwhile, LFI Deputy Marianne Maximi rejected the accusations of left-wing groups being “supporters of pedocriminals.”
‘The Law Cannot Do Everything’
Pierre-Marie Sève, director of the French think tank Institute for Justice, told The Epoch Times that the measure was needed to signal to French society that crimes against minors “are of extreme gravity” and sit at the top of the scale of criminal seriousness.
“For 50 years, the left has not evolved on this question,” he said, describing its approach, “always less punishment and always more rehabilitation,” as “an utterly out of touch ideological position.”
He also stressed the text’s limits, noting that it sets a maximum sentence that jurors are under no obligation to impose.
Mirkovic said she doubts the measure’s deterrent effect and noted that European law requires such sentences to be reviewed after a set period, meaning irreversible life imprisonment does not exist in practice.
“The law cannot do everything,” she said, adding that protecting children also requires society to put an end to the “ambient hypersexualization” of advertising, television, and social media, which she said is defended in the name of “a sexual freedom promoted irresponsibly.”
“Freedom is an important value. However, being free does not mean doing whatever you feel like. Freedom exists to serve the common good,” she said. “Freedom rhymes with responsibility. However, our society wants freedom without the morality that must come with it.”
