I just want to update you on an amazing brave woman in France. This week she WON a victory at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
I’m proud that We Can’t Consent to This were part of this case. As a coalition with French campaigners Osez Le Feminisme! and five others, The Court allowed us to give evidence on the reality of men who claim women ‘consented to’ violence: that this violence is often part of a pattern of domestic abuse. This evidence included the findings of Fiona Mackenzie’s work on criminal justice outcomes in England and Wales and that of Lucy Snow who found that ‘rough sex’ or violence was often part of a pattern of other abusive behaviour.
Note that the court decision is available only in French and so I will update if any errors have resulted from my inaccurate use of 1990s school French and Google Translate.
Brave ‘EA’, the woman who fought this case, was subjected to brutal coercive control
The young woman, known only in this case as ‘EA’, had started a relationship with her a man 15 years her senior: her boss at work in the hospital pharmacy department. Their relationship was initially consensual. It soon became one of his control. He had her sign a BDSM contract agreeing to humiliating acts, including having sex with “others in the presence of the master , including when pregnant”. He would subject her to violence like “slapping, beatings, strangling, spanking, whipping, hair pulling, etc” during sex, even when she asked him to stop. His coercion of her spilled over into their working life: colleagues remarked on his harsh manner towards her. Eventually, she sought psychiatric help, and needed a year off work to recover.
She disclosed what he had done to her. The French police investigated, unenthusiastically. EA’s lawyer told prosecutors she had been a victim of aggravated rape, sexual assault, intentional violence, sexual harassment, ‘moral harrassment’ and ‘abuse of the vulnerable’. But prosecutors decided he was to be charged only with assault (‘intentional violence’) and sexual harassment. He, of course, said everything had been consensual.
The French criminal court decided he should be sentenced for assault and sexual harassment to ten months in prison.
But he then successfully appealed on the basis that her consent was implied by the ‘master-pup’ contract. His defence referred to a 2005 ECHR decision K.A. and A.D. vs Belgium that “violence committed in a sexual context constitutes non-reprehensible play provided that it takes place between consenting adults.” The French court agreed
Undefeated EA, supported by European women at work organisation AVFT, took this to the ECHR who have slammed France for not properly investigating prosecuting ‘non – consensual violence’.
Extract from the BDSM contract she had signed - found by the ECHR to be an instrument of coercive control.
The ECHR says the French courts should not have accepted the ‘master-pup’ contract as evidence of her consent to ‘violent sexual practices subsequently inflicted on her’. And it goes further: the ECHR decides that the BDSM contract she had signed “clearly constitutes one of the instruments of coercive control" of EA.
The Court has ordered the French state to pay her 20,000 damages, and her legal costs. The ECHR decides France had violated her Article 3 and Article 8 rights: protection from Inhuman and Degrading treatment and her right to private life.
Why this matters – for women across Europe including in the UK
EA has won some justice, ten years after the events. France is already reviewing its law on rape in the wake of the Gisele Pelicot trial. This case must surely feed into that.
In my research on ‘consent’ to violence criminal cases for We Can’t Consent to This in 2020, most women haven’t been participants in BDSM. That’s true here in the UK and abroad. But some women had previously discussed or consented to BDSM or porn-inspired violence. So it’s important to note that ‘EA’ had agreed to violence and humiliation in a signed BDSM contract: to have the ECHR recognise this ‘agreement’ as her abuser’s coercive control of her, rather than deciding it was acceptable evidence she’d consented to other violence, is HUGE.
Extract from Consent Defences and the Criminal Justice System, Fiona Mackenzie, We Can’t Consent to This
I really think this judgement will be important here in Britain – the ECHR’s influence on judicial thinking is surprisingly strong. Britain is the only place to have made law on ‘consent’ claims to violence, thanks to our campaign which introduced statute saying that you cannot consent to serious violence. But some men still try: and I know that some women fear that (for instance) previous videos their partner has taken of her consent to ‘rough sex’ will be used against her if she reports serious violence to the police. That happened in the case of a man called Wilkins in 2018 in England.
There remains no bar on sexual history evidence being used in a case where a man is charged with ABH or GBH – despite us pushing for this change back in 2020. And We Can’t Consent to This changed nothing legally in Scotland, yet.
Across Europe, in Germany, France, Sweden, Italy,.. women are subjected to porn violence, just like EA was: beatings, strangulation, slapping, in sex, without consent. Criminal justice systems cannot yet deal with this. Men who kill get off with it. Here in Germany: nothing that this man’s wife had a ‘BDSM tattoo’, a judge gave him a suspended sentence for killing her.
I’ve asked my legal contacts what the true legal implications of this case may be – the judgement is only in French and may take some time to digest. I will update when I hear.
But I think EA’s brave win at the ECHR may give European states a clear signal: that you must investigate and prosecute violence against women, even where the accused man says she consented. You shouldn’t rely on prior consent to ‘rough sex’ or ‘BDSM’ as evidence a woman consented to later violence. And that ‘consent’ can be coerced – in fact the very agreement to degrading and humiliating sexual practices may be an instrument of his coercive control of her.
Fiona Mackenzie, 7th September 2025
Links/notes
We Can’t Consent to This was part of a coalition of women’s groups led by French feminists Osez Le Feminisme! who were given permission to intervene in the ECHR case. Our 3rd party intervention included Fiona Mackenzie MBE’s research on criminal cases where men claim consent which includes Lucy Snow’s findings from research with women who experience ‘rough sex’ in their relationships. As the ECHR summarises: “The NGO Osez le féminisme ! and the co-intervening organizations consider that sadomasochism is based on a patriarchal and violent ideology. In their view, sadomasochistic relationships are overwhelmingly based on coercion and are criminogenic. The third-party interveners indicate that it is not uncommon, in practice, for male perpetrators of sexual violence to seek to exonerate themselves from criminal responsibility by pleading that the victim deliberately engaged in violent sexual practices. However, they argue that consent has derisory probative value when expressed by a female victim of violence. They emphasize that consent to violent sexual practices may be part of a dynamic of domestic violence or result from coercive strategies consisting of exploiting the trauma of a vulnerable victim. For these reasons, they maintain that the notion of consent should not be the determining factor in criminal offenses punishing sexual violence.”
Fiona Mackenzie MBE: Consent Defences and the Criminal Justice System, 2020
Lucy Snow’s research with women who had experienced violence in sex: “being subjected to non-consensual violence in sex is very often in the context of a wider pattern of control and abuse. 80% of research respondents had experienced non-consensual violence in sex from a partner or ex-partner. Of the women who detailed further abuse from the same man:· 75% said the same man had been abusive in other ways (for example: controlling, possessive, emotionally abusive, physically abusive). Summarised from We Can’t Consent to This: ‘I thought this was normal’, 2021
Case decision (in French at the moment – your browser may have a translate option)
The troubling 2005 ECHR case decision in KA and AD vs Belgium, which the man in this case used in his favour in defence
