- Person
- Gisèle Halimi
- Lived
- 1927–2020
- Field
- Law, women's rights
- From
- Tunisian-French
The story
In the 1970s, French law nominally treated rape as a serious crime, but its definition was so narrow that most cases never reached the courts that try serious crimes. Prosecutors routinely reclassified rape as indecent assault, a lesser offense tried in lower courts, and victims were often treated as if they were to blame. The lawyer Gisèle Halimi, who had already helped win the fight over abortion at the Bobigny trial of 1972, set out to change this.
In 1974 two young Belgian women, Anne Tonglet and Araceli Castellano, were camping in the coves near Marseille. After they rejected the advances of a group of men during the day, three of the men returned at night and attacked and raped them. Halimi took their case and fought for it to be heard not as a minor offense but by the Court of Assizes, which in France tries the most serious crimes before a jury.
The trial finally opened in Aix-en-Provence in 1978. The atmosphere was hostile: the victims and their lawyer were insulted and threatened. As at Bobigny, Halimi used the trial to speak beyond the judges to the whole country, calling prominent public figures as witnesses and arguing that the case was about how society treated every woman who reported a rape. Her association, Choisir la cause des femmes, later published the full transcript of the proceedings.
The three men were convicted. The leader was sentenced to six years in prison and the other two to four years. The case became a national debate, and it contributed directly to the law of December 23, 1980, introduced by Senator Brigitte Gros. That law gave French criminal law its modern definition of rape: any act of sexual penetration, of whatever nature, committed on another person by violence, coercion or surprise. Rape was now clearly a crime to be judged in the Court of Assizes, whatever the kind of penetration.
The Aix trial also showed the value of giving victims a voice in open court, a lesson that shaped later campaigns against sexual violence in France and beyond.
Why it matters
The 1980 law that grew out of the Aix trial still defines rape in French law and lets victims see their attackers tried as serious criminals.
About Gisèle Halimi
Tunisian-born French lawyer whose courtroom battles helped legalize abortion in France and led to the 1980 law that finally treated rape as a serious crime.
More about Gisèle Halimi
Sources
- Gisèle Halimi Wikipédia (French)
- Gisèle Halimi Wikipedia
- Gisèle Halimi: A courageous anti-colonialist and feminist lawyer International Viewpoint
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.