French woman who refused sex with husband not to blame for divorce, European court rules

A woman who was considered “at fault” by the French legal system for her divorce because she stopped having sex with her husband has won an appeal at France’s highest human rights court. Europe.

On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in favor of a 69-year-old French woman, saying that courts in France had violated her right to respect for private and family life.

The case concerned a defects-based divorce in France in which blame was placed solely on the woman – identified only by the initials HW – on the grounds that she had stopped having sexual relations with her husband, according to the decision of the CDE.

The woman did not contest the divorce, which she had sought in 2012, but instead complained about the grounds on which it was granted by a French court.

After several court hearings over many years, a French appeals court in 2019 granted the divorce and said the woman’s “failure” to have sex with her husband constituted a “serious and repeated violation of marital duties and obligations.

“The court concluded that the very existence of such a marital obligation was contrary to sexual freedom (and) the right to bodily autonomy,” the ECHR said in its decision.

HW’s lawyer Lilia Mhissen said the ruling could mark a turning point for women’s rights in France and put an end to women being blamed for divorces in future rulings.

“Courts will finally stop interpreting French law through the lens of canon law and impose an obligation on women to have sex within marriage,” she said.

The French government has not publicly commented on the ECHR’s decision.

‘Marriage is not sexual servitude’

The woman and her husband married in 1984 and had four children. One of the couple’s children was left disabled, requiring HW to provide constant care and putting additional stress on the marriage, the judgment said.

The woman said she stopped having sex starting in 2004 due to health problems and abuse from her husband.

After having exhausted all legal avenues in France, HW took his case to the ECHR in 2021.

The two women’s rights groups that supported her case, Women’s Foundation and Feminist Collective Against Rape, said in a 2021 joint statement: “Marriage is not and must not be sexual servitude.”

The ECHR’s decision comes a month after the high-profile mass rape trial involving Gisèle Pelicot, whose former husband Dominique was sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging and recruiting men to rape her at her unknown for more than a decade.

The trial – which also saw 50 other men convicted of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault for participating in Dominique Pelicot’s scheme – spurred a national reckoning over the blight of France’s rape culture and spurred calls to stricter measures.

A cross-party panel of French lawmakers this week said the country must change its rape law to include consent. Existing law defines rape as an act committed against a person using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise,” without clear mention of consent.