French Lawmakers Restore Life Sentence Proposal for Child Rapists Days After Left Struck It Down

PARIS—France’s National Assembly voted on July 21 to create a life sentence for serial rapes committed against children under 15, reversing a vote four days earlier in which left-wing deputies had removed the measure from the government’s child protection bill.

Deputies adopted the disputed article by 258 votes to 84, then passed the bill as a whole by 378 votes to 7.

The provision, pushed by the government after the Lyhanna case, was opposed by the hard-left France unbowed (LFI) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, by the Greens, and by the Socialists.

It was defended by the conservative Les Républicains (LR) and by the right-wing National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen.

Article 11 creates a new sentence of criminal life imprisonment for rape committed against a minor under 15 when the offense is combined with one or more other rapes against other victims. It also sets a 30-year sentence when one victim of serial rapes is aged 15 to 18.

Left and Right Clash

On Friday, July 17, left-wing deputies, more heavily mobilized in the chamber than their opponents, defeated the article by 41 votes to 37, denouncing a measure they said was repressive and masked insufficient funding for investigations, prevention, and victim support.

Aurore Bergé, the minister for equality between women and men, requested a second vote. She cited the case of Joël Le Scouarnec, the retired surgeon sentenced in 2025 for sexual crimes against hundreds of patients, most of them children. In such a case, she said, life imprisonment could not be sought, and the maximum sentence was 20 years.

In their deletion amendment, LFI deputies wrote that the provision belonged “more to penal populism than to a genuine policy” against sexual violence committed against children.

Criminal law already punishes aggravated rape heavily, they argued, and the scandal is “not the insufficiency of the penalties incurred” but “the impunity” of sexual violence against children and women. Priority, they said, should go to recruiting magistrates, investigators, and court clerks.

A second deletion amendment, filed by Arnaud Bonnet for the Ecologist and Social group, called the measure a “penal escalation” that “has no deterrent effect” and risks producing what French law calls dry releases, meaning prisoners freed at the end of their term without support or judicial supervision. The group called for investment in prevention instead. Both amendments had been rejected earlier the same day, by 56 votes to 36.

Aude Mirkovic, a French lecturer in private law at the University of Evry and spokeswoman for the child protection association Lawyers for Children, told The Epoch Times that the shortage of judicial resources is real but does not explain the decisions she sees.

“The argument about resources does not hold,” she said, pointing to reported rapes of minors that lead to no judicial action, as in the Lyhanna case, while other prosecutions, she said, move forward with considerable force.

The RN had accused France unbowed and the Greens on X of refusing life imprisonment for child rapists, writing that the two amendments spoke for themselves.

“Your priority is to prepare the release of predators; ours is to guarantee that no child crosses his path again,” RN deputy Sophie Blanc told the left.

Meanwhile, LFI MP Marianne Maximi rejected the accusations of left-wing groups being “supporters of pedocriminals.”

‘The Law Cannot Do Everything’

Pierre-Marie Sève, director of the French think tank Institute for Justice, told The Epoch Times that the measure was needed to signal to French society that crimes against minors “are of extreme gravity” and sit at the top of the scale of criminal seriousness.

“For 50 years, the left has not evolved on this question,” he said, describing its approach, “always less punishment and always more rehabilitation,” as “an utterly out of touch ideological position.”

He also stressed the text’s limits, noting that it sets a maximum sentence that jurors are under no obligation to impose.

Mirkovic said she doubts the measure’s deterrent effect and noted that European law requires such sentences to be reviewed after a set period, meaning irreversible life imprisonment does not exist in practice.

“The law cannot do everything,” she said, adding that protecting children also requires society to put an end to the “ambient hypersexualization” of advertising, television, and social media, which she said is defended in the name of “a sexual freedom promoted irresponsibly.”

“Freedom is an important value. However, being free does not mean doing whatever you feel like. Freedom exists to serve the common good,” she said. “Freedom rhymes with responsibility. However, our society wants freedom without the morality that must come with it.”