Incest accusation in prominent family prompts French

Beyond the country's elite where it originated, the Duhamel scandal has prompted a national reckoning on incest in France, with hundreds of purported victims coming forward on social media under the hashtag #MetooInceste. French people took to Twitter to share harrowing stories of childhood abuse at the hands of parents and family members and how that trauma -- and the accompanying sense of shame and isolation -- often persisted well into their adult lives.
Feminist thinker and activist Caroline De Haas, who was one of the initiators of #MeTooIncest, told CNN: "We wanted to show incest was a political, collective issue."
She explained the #MeTooIncest movement came from a will to shift from the individual story of the Kouchner twins towards a collective history of incest.

Students demonstrate in front of the Sciences Po university to denounce gender-based violence. Signs read "We believe you" and "Silence = accomplice."
French lawyers have also seen a rise in the number of victims stepping forward to share their stories. Child protection lawyer Marie Grimaud told France Inter radio on Tuesday that "for three weeks we have received many calls from women who have realized the need to speak, to meet a lawyer, to file a complaint." In addition to victims themselves, Grimaud said her office had been contacted by people "on behalf of a brother or little sister or a niece" who they believe "may be in danger."
Facing Incest, an NGO supporting abuse victims, said 10% of French people had suffered incest, according to a representative survey of 1,033 French adults aged 18 and above, interviewed online November 4-5, 2020, by the IPSOS polling agency. "It is a mass crime we are talking about," says the non-profit.
Facing Incest has long advocated for changing the legislation to better protect minors from sexual abuse within the family. With the Duhamel scandal grabbing French media headlines for over a month, the government has taken hold of the issue.
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti told France 2 public broadcaster on Tuesday that the government planned to categorize any penetrative sexual relationship with a child under 15 as rape.
Currently, for a sexual relationship with a minor under 15 to be treated as a serious crime -- rather than a lesser offense with a lighter penalty -- it is necessary to prove coercion, violence, threat or surprise.

It all started with damning allegations from book excerpts published in France's prestigious Le Monde newspaper as the new year began.

"I was 14 and I let it go (...). I was 14, I knew and didn't say anything."
"My stepfather would come into my brother's room. I could hear his footsteps in the hallway and knew he was joining him. In this silence, I imagined things. That he was asking my brother to stroke him maybe, to suck him.
"I was waiting. I was waiting for him to come out of the room, full of unfamiliar and immediately despised smells," the book's author, 45-year old lawyer Camille Kouchner, wrote. "By not naming what was happening, I participated in the incest."
More than a month after its publication, Kouchner's book, "La familia grande," continues to rock France.
In it, Kouchner accuses her step-father, leading French intellectual Olivier Duhamel, of abusing her twin brother starting when he was 14.
The twins are the children of former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
Their step-father, Duhamel, is a Socialist former member of the European Parliament and a renowned political pundit who also headed the governing board of Sciences Po, one of France's leading universities.
"Being subjected to personal attacks, and in an attempt to preserve the institutions in which I work, I terminate my functions," Duhamel wrote on Twitter on January 4, shortly after the accusations surfaced. The tweet coincided with his quitting the governing board of Sciences Po as well as leaving roles in an intellectual club and a political science publication.
Duhamel has since deleted the tweet and his Twitter account.

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