This Thursday, France presented an unpublished study that shows the gap between the complaints filed for gender violence and the criminal response given to them: only one in 10 ends in a conviction. For the first time, the Ministries of the Interior and Justice have brought together the police and the gendarmerie with those of the judicial processes linked to these crimes. Until now, the statistical services of both ministries worked separately, but “sexist violence within a couple is a serious problem and society demanded to know what judicial treatment is given to crimes,” explained Pascal Chevalier, head of the statistics service at the Ministry of Justice, during the presentation of the study.
Both ministries have analyzed the cases of the more than 800,000 victims over the age of 15 who filed a complaint with law enforcement between 2018 and 2023. Of them, 85% were women, and 15% men; In France the concept of marital violence is still used, so in this statistic there are both female and male victims who reported all types of violence, although the majority, 77%, was due to physical assault; 16% reported their partner or ex-partner for threats; and in 8% of the cases it was due to psychological violence, among others. The complaint was not always for only one type of violence; in 12% of the cases it was for two or more.
Of the entire period analyzed, attempted rape only represented 4%. “The objective was not to carry out a study on sexist violence, but to connect the data to individually monitor each of the cases,” Pascal Chevalier explained.
Seven out of 10 complaints of sexual violence are dismissed
According to the report, of the total complaints, 42% were filed for different reasons. For example, the evidence was insufficient, “the circumstances of the crime were not clear, the investigation was fruitless, the offender was not identified,” or the victim withdrew the complaint, detailed Elise Léveque, from the Ministry of Justice and one of the authors of the study. In sexual violence specifically, 70% were dismissed, and 23% in those referring to attempted homicide.
Two months ago, the group of experts in the field of gender violence of the Council of Europe (Grevio) published the situation of the country in its compliance with the so-called Istanbul Convention, the European agreement against gender violence. In it, specialists warned about the lack of protection that exists in that country for victims of sexual violence; He precisely denounced the laxity of justice and criticized that, according to his calculation, 83% of complaints end up being filed.
The study that the French ministries have now published shows that six out of every 10 complaints filed were followed up by Justice, although only one in three ended up in a criminal court. In this case, the majority (96%) ended with a conviction for the person involved. “Normally there are more guilty sentences when the complaint is for various types of violence,” for example physical attacks and threats, explained Valérie Carrasco, from the statistical service of the Ministry of the Interior, another of the co-authors of the study.
One of the aspects that feminist associations most criticize is the delay in time, that is, the period that passes between the complaint at the police station and the court’s response. The report reveals that 70% of complaints filed were resolved in less than a year, including those that were archived.
And what the report has not included were femicides, that is, the numbers of fatalities from this violence, which correspond to the victims’ delegation of the Ministry of the Interior. Last year, 94 women were murdered by their partners or ex-partners and so far this year there are 78. In 2024, a total of 272,400 complaints of sexist violence were registered, slightly above the previous year (271,000).
