PARIS -- Sexual and physical abuse in France's porn industry is “systemic” and lawmakers should better regulate the production of videos and protect children who are “heavily exposed” to the content, according to a French Senate report released Wednesday. .
The report, titled “Hell Behind the Scenes,” was the first prepared for the French parliament to focus on the porn industry, which the authors described as “predatory.”
During six months of research, the Senate’s delegation for women’s rights and gender equality heard from over 50 people involved in the industry, women’s right activists and alleged victims.
“Both the actual volume of pornographic contents accessible to all and their very nature have contributed to make violent sexual acts against women banal,” the report's authors wrote.
“Sexual, physical and verbal abuses are widespread in porn, making them systemic. They are not simulated but very real for the women who are being filmed,” they added.
A police investigation into alleged rape, human trafficking and pimping in France’s porn industry has called attention to abuse in the business. Dozens of alleged victims have come forward in two separate cases linked to a major video platform and France's leading amateur porn site.
The Senate report aims to alert alert the government and the broader public about the huge scale of the problem, the authors said. They noted the “massive, ordinary and toxic” viewing of porn by children despite French law requiring viewers to be at least 18 years old.
“We must stop having an old, distorted, watered-down view of porn. Porn today includes violent, degrading, humiliating contents,” Sen. Annick Billon, co-author and president of the Senate’s delegation, said
"Scenes in which a man, most often several men, up to 50, are inflicting physical and sexual abuse to women have become standard,” she added.
Billon and the other delegation members issued 23 recommendations for enforcing current laws and introducing new regulations.
They include making it a criminal offense to incite the committing of a rape in the context of the porn industry, issuing “dissuasive” fines to make it more difficult for minors to access porn and requiring age-verification mechanisms..
