No statute of limitations for crimes against minors: the Senate says no, the government tries again

The facts

The bill on the protection of children reaches the floor of the Senate this Wednesday, 28 October, with debates scheduled until 3 November, according to the upper house's legislative file. Tabled on 27 May under the fast-track procedure, it was first meant to address the crisis in child welfare services (aide sociale à l'enfance). The government then strengthened it after revelations of sexual violence in after-school care, Public Sénat recalls.

In the National Assembly, on 16 July, deputies adopted by 93 votes to 51 an amendment by the ecologist Arnaud Bonnet making crimes committed against minors imprescriptible, LCP reports. The Justice Minister, Gérald Darmanin, gave it a favourable opinion on behalf of the government, while saying he was unsure it was compatible with the Constitution. The bill was adopted on 21 July.

On 21 October, the Senate law committee removed this provision at the proposal of its rapporteurs, Agnès Canayer (LR) and Dominique Vérien (Union centriste), according to Public Sénat. This Tuesday, on the same outlet, the minister for Equality between women and men, Aurore Bergé, announced that she would table an amendment on behalf of the government to restore it.

The positions at stake

The rapporteurs put forward serious arguments. According to Public Sénat, Agnès Canayer stresses that imprescriptibility currently applies only to crimes against humanity, and that departing from this would be a break with French legal tradition. She points first to a constitutional risk. She also doubts that the measure meets victims' need for recognition, which exists independently of a trial.

not destabilise criminal law — Agnès Canayer, rapporteur (LR)

Instead, the committee adopted a sentence of thirty years' imprisonment for rapes committed serially or with several aggravating circumstances. It rejected the life sentence voted by deputies for serial rapes of children under 15, judged inconsistent with the scale of penalties.

On the other side, Aurore Bergé starts from the experience of victims. According to Enfance et Jeunesse Infos, she notes that victims are encouraged to speak out, and then the statute of limitations is held against them when they do so late. This "guillotine", in her view, is:

an additional violence for the victims — Aurore Bergé, minister for Equality

The divide does not follow party lines. In July, according to LCP, deputies from the Macronist camp and the Republican right, Violette Spillebout and Émilie Bonnivard, supported the amendment, while the La France insoumise rapporteur Marianne Maximi criticised the method, which in her view drew the debate away from child welfare services. Yannick Monnet (Gauche démocrate et républicaine) saw it as a "diversion" masking the lack of resources. The Rassemblement national, through Sophie Blanc, preferred very long limitation periods.

The analysis

We must first measure where we start from. As Public Sénat recalled in 2023, the rape of a minor is currently time-barred thirty years after the victim comes of age, and a sexual assault twenty years after. Since the law of 21 April 2021, a so-called "sliding" limitation applies: if the perpetrator assaults another child, the period only runs from the last offence. France is therefore not a lax country in this area.

But the demand for imprescriptibility does not come from nowhere. The Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence against Children (Ciivise) recommended it in its November 2023 report. Of the some 27,000 testimonies it had collected, 75% concerned time-barred acts, according to Public Sénat. This figure shows the scale of suffering left unanswered. Several European neighbours, including Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark, have already made this choice, Public Sénat recalled.

The judicial figures cited at the time by Public Sénat nevertheless offer another lesson. Over the 2016-2022 period, only 3% of cases of sexual violence against minors were dismissed because the acts were too old, compared with 66% for an offence deemed insufficiently established. The main obstacle to justice is therefore not time, it is evidence: investigations that are too slow, overwhelmed child protection police units, testimony gathered too late or poorly.

A Republic attached to a sense of the State must hold both ends. Abolishing the statute of limitations for sexual crimes against children is a legitimate act of recognition, which the Republican right as well as the left can embrace. Limiting it to sexual crimes, as the government initially envisaged according to LCP, would make the measure more coherent than extending it to all crimes committed against minors. But promising a trial without giving the justice system the means to hold it would expose victims to a new disappointment.

Nor should this debate overshadow the heart of the bill: child welfare services, background checks on adults working with children, which led to 4,185 bans on practising in 2025 according to Public Sénat, and the register of sanctions created at the initiative of Senator Agnès Evren (LR).

A proposal

The Senate and the government could reach an honourable agreement: restore imprescriptibility for sexual crimes against minors only, and back it with a costed programme of resources for investigations, forensic expertise and child welfare services. The question remains open: will the government agree to fund what it promises, in a 2027 budget already under strain?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.