A woman who refuses sex to her husband should not be considered by justice as “faulty” in the event of divorce, decided the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which condemned France on Thursday.
The Court agreed to the applicant, a 69 -year -old Frenchwoman whose husband had obtained the divorce from his wife’s exclusive wrongs on the grounds that she had ceased to have sex with him for several years.
In a judgment rendered on Thursday, the court that sits in Strasbourg recalls that “any non -consented sexual act constitutes a form of sexual violence”.
“The Court cannot admit, as the government suggests, that consent to marriage takes consent to future sexual relations. Such a justification would be likely to remove its reprehensible character in marital rape, ”says the ECHR.
Right to respect for privacy and family
“I hope that this decision will mark a turning point in the fight for women’s rights in France,” the applicant reacted in a statement transmitted by her lawyer Lilia Mhissen.
In July 2018, the family judge of the Versailles tribunal de grande instance had considered that the divorce could not be pronounced for fault and that the health problems of the wife were likely to justify the sustainable absence of sexuality within the couple.
But in 2019, the Versailles Court of Appeal had pronounced the divorce to the exclusive wrongs of the wife holding as a “fault” his refusal of “intimate relations with her husband”.
The applicant had made a cassation appeal, which had been rejected.
The wife then seized the ECHR, arguing article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, relating to the right to respect for private and family life.
“Unworthy of a civilized society”
“It was impossible for me to accept it and stop there,” she said in a statement on Thursday.
“The decision of the Court of Appeal condemning me and is unworthy of a civilized society because it refused me the right not to consent to sexual relations, depriving me of my freedom to decide my body. She comforted my husband and all the spouses in “a right to impose their will”.
Rejoicing about the ECHR’s decision, the sixties, mother of four, said that “this victory is for all women who like me, find themselves faced with aberrant and unjust judicial decisions, calling into question their bodily integrity and their right to intimacy”.
One of her lawyers, Delphine Zughebi said that “now marriage is no longer a sexual servitude. This decision is all the more fundamental since nearly rape in two is committed by the spouse or partner. ”
