French Supreme Court rules that women cannot commit rape Copyright © 1998 Nando.net Copyright © 1998 Reuters News Service PARIS (October 21, 1998 06:38 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - France's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that women are unable to commit the crime of rape because they cannot sexually penetrate men. "The material element of the crime of rape is only realized if the perpetrator commits the act of sexual penetration on the person of the victim," it said in its judgment. The court, known as the Cour de Cassation, overturned a lower court ruling that Catherine Maillard could be tried for rape on charges of forcing her underage stepson to have sex with her repeatedly between 1986 and 1992. Maillard could only be tried for "aggravated sexual aggression" against the boy, while his father Michel Deloisy had to be tried for "moral abandonment of a child" instead of the original charge of "complicity in aggravated rape," the court said. With its judgment, the court seemed to contradict an earlier ruling it issued in December 1997 saying that forcing someone to perform oral sex act was legally equivalent to rape. -- Tim Griffiths griffith@wis.weizmann.ac.il Center for Submicron Research http://tim01.ex.ac.uk Weizmann Institute of Science (972)-8-934-2736 Rehovot 76100 Israel PGP Public key available - finger tim@tim01.ex.ac.uk The real value lies not in what I say or do, but in your reaction to it. -DF