This Thursday, France presented an unprecedented study which shows the gap between complaints filed for gender-based violence and the criminal response given to them: only one in 10 results in a conviction. For the first time, the Ministries of the Interior and Justice shared data from complaints recorded by the police and gendarmerie with data from legal proceedings linked to these crimes. Until now, the statistical services of the two ministries worked separately, but “sexist violence within couples constitutes a serious problem and society demanded to know what judicial treatment is reserved for crimes”, explained Pascal Chevalier, head of the statistical service at the Ministry of Justice, during the presentation of the study.
The two ministries analyzed the cases of more than 800,000 victims over the age of 15 who filed complaints with law enforcement between 2018 and 2023. Among them, 85% were women and 15% men; In France the concept of domestic violence is still used, which is why in this statistic there are female and male victims who reported all types of violence, although the majority, 77%, was due to physical attacks; 16% reported threats to their partner or ex-partner; and in 8% of cases, this was due, among other things, to psychological violence. The complaint did not always concern a single type of violence; in 12% of cases, there were two or more.
Over the entire period analyzed, complaints of rape or attempted rape represent only 4%. “The objective was not to carry out a study on gender-based violence, but to link the data to monitor each case individually,” explains Pascal Chevalier.
Seven out of ten complaints of sexual violence are rejected
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 unsuccessful, the offender was not identified”, or the victim withdrew her complaint, detailed Élise Lévêque, of the Ministry of Justice and one of the authors of the study. In terms of sexual violence specifically, 70% were dismissed, and 23% for those referring to attempted homicide.
Two months ago, the Council of Europe’s group of experts in the field of gender-based violence (Grevio) published the first report for France analyzing the country’s situation in its compliance with the so-called Istanbul Convention, the European agreement against gender-based violence. In this document, specialists warn of the lack of protection that exists in this country for victims of sexual violence; He rightly denounced the laxity of justice and criticized the fact that, according to his calculations, 83% of complaints end up being filed.
The study just published by the French ministries shows that six out of ten complaints filed were followed up by the courts, even if only one out of three ended up before a criminal court. In this case, the majority (96%) resulted in a conviction of the person involved. “Normally, there are more convictions when the complaint relates to different types of violence”, for example physical attacks and threats, explained Valérie Carrasco, of the statistical service of the Ministry of the Interior, another of the co-authors of the study.
One of the aspects most criticized by feminist associations is the delay, that is to say the time which elapses between the complaint at the police station and the response from the court. The report reveals that 70% of complaints filed were resolved in less than a year, including those archived.
And what the report does not include are feminicides, that is to say the number of victims of this violence, which corresponds to the delegation of victims of the Ministry of the Interior. Last year, 94 women were murdered by their partner or ex-partner and so far this year there are 78. In 2024, a total of 272,400 complaints of gender-based violence have been recorded, slightly more than the previous year (271,000).
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