Question 17284 — children

Summary

Mr. Peio Dufau draws the attention of the Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, to the resources devoted to the fight against sexual violence against children. On July 15, 2026, the minister announced that 85,047 complaints of sexual violence against minors were being processed in the territory, much more than the 70,000 initially mentioned. For the jurisdiction of the Bayonne judicial court alone, 550 situations were recorded by the judicial services, the national police and the gendarmerie. Even though 9 out of 10 victims do not file a complaint and therefore do not appear in these figures, this census confirms the systemic scale of sexual violence committed against children and questions the capacity of our judicial system to respond to it. It also highlights long-standing structural difficulties of lack of judicial personnel leading to longer processing times and court saturation. However, several European institutions have repeatedly sounded the alarm. The European Commission's annual reports on the rule of law highlight the persistent difficulties of French justice, in particular the delays in processing cases and insufficient human resources. The European Commission for the effectiveness of justice (CEPEJ) has noted for several years that France remains well below the European average in number of magistrates per inhabitants. Finally, the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly condemned France for excessive procedural delays or violations of the right to a fair trial. According to CEPEJ data, France has around 3.2 prosecutors per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 11.4 on average European. Achieving this average would require the creation of around 5,700 additional public prosecutor positions, at an estimated cost of around 451 million euros. This amount, far from being excessive, must on the contrary be compared to the economic cost of sexual violence against children. From 2023, the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children (CIIVISE) estimated this at 10 billion euros per year, without even fully taking into account the human, health and social consequences for the victims. Also, beyond the legitimate emotion aroused by the recently revealed figures, it appears essential to provide a structural response to a lasting crisis in criminal justice and child protection. It is also the responsibility of the Government to address the systemic causes of violence made to children, the non-detection of this violence, the culture of silence and the failure to welcome the words of victims, which hinder their denunciation. Consequently, he asks him if he intends to implement the main recommendations made by the CIIVISE, in particular making child protection a national priority, strengthening the training of all professionals in detecting violence sexual violence, improve the circulation of worrying information, develop danger assessment tools, strengthen controls on people working with minors, systematically apply the precautionary principle when a child is likely to be exposed to a risk of sexual violence and generalize the motivation as well as the notification of decisions to classify without action to victims; if he commits to include on the parliamentary agenda, through an accelerated procedure, bill no. 2169 aimed at strengthening the fight against gender-based and sexual violence, in order to improve the consideration of children's voices, to place their best interests at the heart of criminal proceedings and to strengthen the judicial response; to detail the budgetary measures that the Government intends to undertake from the next draft law finances in order to respond to the mass crime of violence against children.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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