The French parliament this week adopted a bill defining rape as any non-consensual sexual act.
France: Two French policemen have been charged with allegedly raping a young woman while she was in custody, with one of the suspects apparently filming the act on his phone.
The officers were initially suspended after the woman accused them of assaulting her earlier this week while she was in custody at a court in Bobigny, a town in the northeastern suburbs of Paris.
The woman is 26, while the two accused officers are 23 and 35, according to a source close to the case.
She had been brought before the Bobigny public prosecutor’s office for acts of parental neglect. The men — who were on duty at the Bobigny judicial court — insist that the sex acts overnight Tuesday to Wednesday were consensual.
The two officers have been charged with rape and sexual assault by persons abusing their authority and remanded in custody, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement on Saturday.
On Sunday, Beccuau said a video had been discovered on the mobile phone of one of the officers under investigation.
The video lasts four seconds and shows a sexual act, a source close to the case told AFP.
The decision to charge the police officers was based on “statements made by the complainant, which were corroborated by a number of elements in our case file,” including the video, Beccuau told broadcaster France Info.
“These are all elements that lend credibility to her word,” the prosecutor added.
The case, Beccuau said, raised questions about “the reality of consent when we consider that this woman was being held in a courthouse detention centre, and was therefore already deprived of her freedom of movement and was in a situation of physical constraint.”
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said this week that “if proven, these actions are extraordinarily serious and unacceptable.”
France has been rocked by a series of high-profile rape cases in recent months that have sparked a debate about consent.
The French parliament this week adopted a bill defining rape as any non-consensual sexual act, a vote hailed by supporters as a move from “a culture of rape to a culture of consent”.
