Publication of Open Letters
An open letter signed by 69 people was published in Le Monde, on the eve of the trial of three Frenchmen, (Bernard Dejager, Jean-Claude Gallien, and Jean Burckardt), all accused of having sex with 13 and 14 year old girls and boys. Two of them had then been in temporary custody since 1973 and the letter referred to this fact as scandalous. The letter claimed there was a disproportion between the qualification of their acts as a crime and the nature of the reproached acts, and also a contradiction since adolescents in France were fully responsible for their acts from the age of 13. The text also opined that if 13 year old girls in France had the right to receive the pill, then they also should be able to consent.
A similar letter was published in the paper Libération in 1979, supporting Gérard R., an accused child sex criminal awaiting his trial for eighteen months, signed by 63 persons, stating that Gérard R. lived with young girls aged 6 to 12 and that they were happy with the situation. The letter was later reproduced in the paper L'Express, in the issue of March 7, 2001.
Read more about this topic: French Petition Against Age Of Consent Laws
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