Sexual Assault Lawyer in Paris

What counts as sexual assault or rape under French law?

French law draws one line, between rape and every other sexual assault, and since Law No. 2025-1057 of 6 November 2025 it defines sexual assault by the absence of consent, rape remaining defined by violence, coercion, threat or surprise (article 222-23). Article 222-22 of the Penal Code now reads that sexual assault, agression sexuelle, is any non-consensual sexual act committed on another person or on the perpetrator. Consent must be free and informed, specific, prior and revocable. It is assessed in the light of the circumstances and it cannot be inferred from the victim's silence or lack of reaction alone. Violence, coercion, threat and surprise, which used to be the constitutive elements of the offence, remain in the text as situations in which there is no consent.

Rape, viol, is the crime. Article 222-23 defines it as any act of sexual penetration, of whatever nature, or any oral-genital or oral-anal act, committed on another person or on the perpetrator by violence, coercion, threat or surprise, and punishes it with fifteen years of criminal imprisonment. That rises to twenty years with an aggravating circumstance listed in article 222-24, for instance a victim under fifteen, a particularly vulnerable victim, several perpetrators, a weapon, or a spouse or partner as perpetrator. Rape of a minor under fifteen by an adult at least five years older is a crime in its own right since the law of 21 April 2021 (article 222-23-1), also punished by twenty years (article 222-23-3). Rape that caused the victim's death carries thirty years (article 222-25), and rape accompanied by torture or acts of barbarity carries life imprisonment (article 222-26).

Every other sexual assault is a délit, a criminal offence tried by the tribunal correctionnel. The basic penalty is five years of imprisonment and a 75,000 euro fine (article 222-27). It becomes seven years and 100,000 euros with one of the circumstances of article 222-28, and ten years and 150,000 euros where the victim is a minor under fifteen (article 222-29-1). These penalties are the ones in force in 2026: articles 222-24 and 222-28 were last amended by the law of 18 August 2026, and the wording used on this page was checked against the official text on 25 September 2026. Facts committed before 8 November 2025 remain governed by the previous definition, which is one of the first points the firm checks in a file.

What happens after an arrest for sexual assault in Paris?

A complaint for sexual assault or rape almost always leads to garde à vue (police custody), at a police station or in the offices of a judicial police unit. Custody lasts up to 24 hours and can be extended once, to 48 hours, on the prosecutor's written authorisation (article 63 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). Your rights must be notified in a language you understand, with an interpreter where necessary (article 63-1), and a foreign national can ask for their consular authorities to be informed, a call the police must make within three hours except in insurmountable circumstances (article 63-2). The firm assists clients in custody directly in English; how to appoint the firm from a distance is explained on the police custody lawyer page.

What happens next depends on the classification. For rape, a judicial investigation is compulsory (article 79 of the Code of Criminal Procedure): the prosecutor refers the case to a juge d'instruction (investigating judge), who questions the person, decides whether to place them under formal investigation, orders the expert reports and, at the end, decides whether to send the case for trial. That phase often takes more than a year. The judge also rules, with the liberty and custody judge, on pretrial detention or judicial supervision, and in sexual cases the prohibition on contacting the complainant is almost systematic. The steps of the judicial investigation are described on the firm's dedicated page.

For sexual assault, the prosecutor chooses: a summons before the tribunal correctionnel months later, an investigation where the facts are complex, or, more rarely than for other violence, an immediate trial. In Paris these cases are heard at the tribunal judiciaire at Porte de Clichy. Whatever the route, the statements given in the first hours of custody follow the person through the whole procedure, which is why the firm prepares each interview before it takes place rather than discovering the file at the hearing.

How is a defence built against an accusation of sexual assault?

Most of these files come down to two accounts of the same evening, often between people who knew each other, with no witness to the act itself. Since the law of 6 November 2025 the question the court asks is whether consent, in the sense of article 222-22, was given and maintained. That makes the surrounding evidence decisive: the messages exchanged before, during and after, the timeline reconstructed minute by minute, the witnesses to the hours before and after, the medical findings and their consistency with each account, the expert reports on the complainant and on the accused. A serious defence does not consist in attacking the complainant. It consists in confronting the file with the facts it contains, point by point, and in showing where the account given does not match them.

The firm has defended a man held in pretrial detention for three months on a charge of sexual assault, whose acquittal on appeal rested on the inconsistencies between successive statements and the objective elements of the file; the anonymised account is in the firm's sexual assault case study. Every case is different and no outcome can be promised; what the example shows is the method. For an English-speaking client, the regularity of the procedure is also examined: statements taken in custody without a proper interpreter, or rights notified in a language the person did not understand, are arguments the defence raises before the investigating judge or the court.

Two rules apply from the first day. Do not contact the complainant, directly or through friends, which usually breaches the judicial supervision order and is read as pressure. And do not try to explain yourself on social media or to the police without your lawyer: the presumption of innocence protects you at every stage, but it does not undo a statement given in haste.

Victims: how do you file a complaint and obtain compensation in Paris?

A victim can file a complaint at any police station, or send it directly to the prosecutor of the tribunal judiciaire de Paris. Police officers are required to register a complaint, even at a station that is not territorially competent (article 15-3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). When the facts are recent, the forensic examination matters as much as the complaint: in Paris it takes place at the urgences médico-judiciaires, the forensic medical unit at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, on a police requisition, and it records the injuries, collects the samples and sets the number of days of incapacity. Keep every message, photograph and name of a witness, and write down the chronology while it is fresh.

Time limits are the question victims ask first. The prosecution has six years for sexual assault committed against an adult and twenty years for rape committed against an adult, and thirty years from the victim's majority for crimes committed against a minor, a period that can be extended when the same person commits a new sexual offence against another minor (articles 7 and 8 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). Consulting a lawyer, on the other hand, is not subject to any deadline, and many victims come to the firm years after the facts to understand what remains possible.

At trial, the victim joins the proceedings as partie civile (civil party) and claims compensation for every head of loss. Where the prosecution is for rape, the hearing is closed to the public as of right if the civil party asks for it (article 306 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). Independently of the trial, and even where the perpetrator was never identified, the CIVI, the compensation board for victims of crime attached to each tribunal judiciaire, provides full compensation for the personal injury caused by rape and sexual assault (article 706-3). The claim must in principle be filed within three years of the facts, or within one year of the final criminal decision; the board can grant relief from that deadline, and for a victim who was a minor the period only starts at majority (article 706-5). The French mechanisms for victims are set out in French on the firm's page on victims and civil parties. The firm prepares each step with you in English and represents you in French before the court and the board.

Which court tries sexual offences in Paris?

Sexual assault is tried by the tribunal correctionnel of the tribunal judiciaire, in Paris at Porte de Clichy. Rape, as a crime punished by fifteen or twenty years, is tried at first instance by the cour criminelle départementale, the departmental criminal court composed of professional judges, without a jury (article 380-16 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). Since the law of 23 July 2026 that is so even where the accused is in legal recidivism. The cour d'assises, with its citizen jury, remains competent for rape punished by thirty years or life, that is rape that caused the victim's death or was accompanied by torture. Both criminal courts sit under the rules described on the firm's page on the assize court and criminal court, and their decisions can be appealed.

Maître Bruguière appears before the Paris courts and before those of the surrounding departments, Bobigny, Créteil, Nanterre, Évry, Versailles, Meaux and Pontoise, for the defence and for civil parties. The firm receives its clients in English at its office in the 7th arrondissement and pleads in French before the court, with an interpreter provided by the court for the client where the law requires it.