Article 222-23 du Code pénal français

Article 222-23 of the French Penal Code sets out the legal definition of rape as penetration committed through violence, surprise, threat, or coercion. In the trial of Alexandre Farel, the provision became central to the defense’s argument about what the law required the court to find—and about why an acquittal would not itself establish that Mila Wizman had consented.

Definition and Legal Test

The article identifies four means by which penetration may constitute rape: violence, surprise, threat, and coercion. The defense focused particularly on coercion, treating it as a specific legal criterion rather than an automatic inference from the circumstances of an encounter. Its argument was that the court had to assess the alleged conduct against the statutory elements, not decide the case through a general moral judgment.

Use in the Trial

Addressing the allegations, the defense argued that the acts described in court did not, by themselves, establish coercion under the article. It also pointed to the absence of evidence of threats and noted that the civil party acknowledged that no knife had been used against her. The speech further rejected the idea that an unusual setting or the viewing of pornography could independently prove rape. These points were presented as arguments about the legal threshold, not as a determination of what Mila Wizman had experienced.

The defense connected the statutory test to the question of criminal intent. It argued that Alexandre Farel might have misunderstood, or believed he had misunderstood, Mila Wizman’s intentions, and that such doubt could matter to whether the legal elements of the offense were proved. In this framing, the court’s task was to decide guilt under the law rather than to resolve every moral or subjective dimension of the encounter.

Consent and the Limits of Acquittal

The speech explicitly separated the legal finding from the question of consent. It cited the principle that an acquittal on a rape charge does not imply that the complainant consented. An acquittal could instead reflect a failure to prove criminal intent or the presence of doubt about how the accused interpreted the other person’s intentions. The distinction preserves an important limit on what a verdict can establish: a decision that the offense was not proved is not, by itself, proof that the encounter was consensual.

The article therefore functions in the trial not only as a definition but as the framework for a dispute over evidence, interpretation, and the reach of a criminal verdict. The defense invoked its elements to seek acquittal while acknowledging, through the distinction it drew, that the legal outcome would not settle Mila Wizman’s subjective experience or establish consent.