Domestic violence: what the law provides

Article 132-80 of the French Penal Code makes the couple relationship a general aggravating circumstance: where the perpetrator is the victim's spouse, cohabitant or PACS partner, the penalties incurred are increased.

Since the Act of 4 April 2006, this aggravation also applies between former spouses, cohabitants and partners, which answered a documented observation: the period of separation is when the risk is highest. It applies even in the absence of cohabitation.

Created by the Act of 9 July 2010, it is issued by the family court judge, that is by the civil judge, where there are serious reasons to consider the alleged facts and the danger to which the victim is exposed to be plausible.

It can prohibit all contact, allocate the home to the victim even if they neither own it nor hold the lease, rule on the children, authorise the concealment of the address, and offer an anti-approach electronic tag.

Two points are regularly overlooked. No prior complaint is needed to apply for it. And since the Act of 28 December 2019, the judge must rule within a maximum of six days from the setting of the hearing.

These three steps are often confused and do not have the same effects. A complaint refers the matter to the justice system and triggers an investigation. A police log entry, or the judicial information record at the gendarmerie, keeps a dated trace without referring anything to anyone.

This distinction is decisive and discovered too late in many cases. A log entry is useful for establishing a chronology; it opens no procedure. A complaint, moreover, cannot be refused, including away from the place of the events.

The serious danger phone, generalised by the Act of 4 August 2014, allows immediate contact with a dedicated service. The anti-approach tag, created in 2019 and deployed from 2020, triggers an alert when the monitored person crosses a defined perimeter.

3919 is a national listening and guidance number, free, anonymous, open continuously since 2021, which does not appear on phone bills. 114 allows an alert to be raised by written message where a voice call is impossible.

Nothing of the above allows a particular situation to be assessed: the criteria set out presuppose an evaluation of the facts that only professionals in direct contact can conduct.

The purpose of this text is narrower and useful: to make known that remedies exist, that not all of them require a complaint, and that they now obey short deadlines. Ignorance of these three points is, according to public reports, one of the best documented obstacles to seeking help.