“The presumption of innocence does not preclude the words of victims” | EUROtoday

Dor a while now, an disagreeable music has been heard in our ears as legal professionals. If populist speeches have at all times referred to as into query sure of our basic ideas within the identify of safety and the effectiveness of justice (allow us to do not forget that France is the nation of human rights, it’s also the nation of insult “human rights”), the novelty is that this discourse is spreading in political, authorized and mental circles with out the reactions seeming to match the problems at stake.

It is presently the world of ​​sexual violence which crystallizes the trivialization of this kind of remarks. Everyone will clearly agree that releasing victims' voices to talk is useful and that it has allowed justice to take inventory of its delay and the institutional resistance that was plaguing it.

However, this launch is accompanied, by an impossible-to-contain media and digital surge, by worrying rhetoric concerning the judicial remedy of those circumstances. The result’s a pure and easy ban on protection, as probably the most primary mechanisms of prison process are designated because the adversary's software within the service of impunity.

What follows is the questioning of important ideas, particularly the presumption of innocence and its corollary, the burden of proof, the problem of which is not taboo.

For 69% of French folks, our elites ought to systematically resign as quickly as they’re accused of sexual violence, earlier than a conviction is pronounced, which quantities to denying them any proper of entry to the presumption of innocence. This is the determined lesson of an OpinionWay survey from December 2023.

In the identical sense, it’s not distinctive to listen to politicians keep that the applying of our guidelines of regulation ought to be put aside within the identify of notions as grotesque as “ widespread sense “. For example, Juliette Méadel, former Secretary of State, estimated in a column at the World that “victims must be able to benefit from an appropriate system of proof, derogating from common law. The spirit of justice and common sense dictate it.”

Dangerous slope since the 2000s

It can be the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children (Ciivise) which affirms, in its report made public in November 2023, that these ideas are “a good hideout”, in different phrases, pretexts for not defending youngsters as a result of it’s at all times to justify the refusal to guard that they’re acknowledged.

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