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A scandal involving a prominent French intellectual accused of sexually abusing his teenage stepson has prompted a wave of testimonies on social media from people in France who say they were also victims of incest, shedding light on what campaigners say is a major problem.
Just as the #Metoo movement gained momentum on social networks three years ago, France’s current reckoning on incest has been driven by a hashtag, #Metooinceste, under which some 20,000 tweets had been posted as of Monday afternoon. Hundreds of the posts were wrenching accounts from people who said they had been sexually abused as children by adult family members.
“Victims’ voices are getting louder,” said Patrick Loiseleur, the vice president of Facing Incest, a French organization that has advocated for better recognition of the extent of the issue.French law defines incest as a sexual relationship between two people who are related to each other to a degree where marriage is prohibited, including between siblings or between stepparents and stepchildren. But French law criminalizes incest only in the case of sexual abuse, such as r@pe or a sexual relationship between an adult and a minor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/world/europe/duhamel-france-incest.html