France moves to ban incest since the French Revolution

SHAH ALAM - The French government is planning to ban incest for the first tie since 1791.

Currently, incest is still legal in France unless children are involved.

However, French state secretary for children Adrien Taquet said the government wanted to criminalise incestuous relationships even if both parties were 18 and above.

“Whatever the age, you don’t have sexual relations with your father, your son or your daughter.

“It is not a question of age, it is not a question of consenting adults.

“We are fighting against incest. The signals must be clear,” he told AFP.

Taquet said the 18-year threshold for incest must be reviewed, adding that he was for the “clear ban”.

If enforced, France would be in line with other European countries.

The new legislation also entailed that cousins would still be allowed to marry but there was still no confirmation whether stepfamilies would be included in the ban.

“The law is to clear prohibitions in society and incest is prohibited,” he said.

Child advocate Laurent Boyet, chairman of child protection charity Les Papillons, welcomed the announcement by Tacquet.

“Incest is socially forbidden but not legally forbidden and it is important to make the two coincide.

“[A sexual relationship] between a parent and a child always involves a form of control even when the child has reached adulthood, which is why incest is a specific act that requires specific legislation,” he was quoted saying in The Times.

French President Emmanuel Macron made headlines in January last year when he called for a tightening of rules on incest following the publication of a book that accused the country’s most prominent political commentator, Olivier Duhamel, of abusing his stepson.

Duhamel admitted to abusing the teenage boy in the 1980s but he was never prosecuted because of the French statute of limitations.

His stepdaughter Camille Kouchner, who is the twin’s victim, wrote a book titled “La Familia grande” entailing the abuse, saying that she could “no longer be silent”.

She and her twin brother are the children of France's former foreign minister and co-founder of the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) medical charity Bernard Kouchner and academic Evelyne Pisier, who died in 2017. Kouchner and Pisier separated and she went on to marry Duhamel.