Will French TV campaign to stop parents smacking children lead to a ban? Fat chance

Another campaign in the form of a 30-second spot on TV and Internet, will be launched this week in France by the Fondation de l'enfance (Foundation for childhood) designed to show why it's not all right to smack a child.

According to the Fondation, in three out of every four French families, parents resort at some point to smacking or slapping their children.

We're talking about under-fives here!

"Any abuse of children can affect their physical and psychological health," says the co-ordinator of the campaign Dr Gilles Lazimi on the organisation's official website.

He wants legislation introduced to bring France into line with most other European countries

The video, is designed to illustrate that this form of "education" is not only counterproductive but also dangerous.

It's also supposed to shock parents.

(screenshot from Fondation de l'enfance video)

 Here we go again. A campaign meant to raise awareness of an issue but one which will probably be met at best with disinterested indifference.

The evidence that it'll have little or no impact is overwhelming.

23 European countries have already passed legislation making corporal punishment, of which smacking is a part, a punishable offence.

Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, Netherland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine,

"Status of corporal punishment: total abolition has been achieved – corporal punishment is prohibited in the home, schools, penal systems and alternative care settings"

But France looks as though it's in no hurry to do likewise.

A bill was presented to the National Assembly by the former parliamentarian and paediatrician  Edwige Antier in 2010.

Nothing happened.

Just over a year ago TF1 ran a report on the "Bon usage de la fessée" in which the case of one mother was used to explain how and why so many parents think it's all right to smack their children...when it's done "properly".

And even though the report also focused on a workshop to encourage alternative sets of parenting skills, the inclusion of a doctor saying it was "all right on occasions to smack a child" simply made the three-and-a-half minute piece an apology for an accepted practice.

(screenshot from Fondation de l'enfance video)

On Monday, France 2 featured the launch of the Fondation's campaign towards the end of its prime time news (here's the link - after the commercial fast forward to 31.37)

The least can be said is that just over one year down the line, attitudes towards smacking seem to be pretty much the same and the format for covering the issue is exactly that: a format.

First up one mother "explaining" that a "gentle" smack was sometimes both appropriate and necessary for her children "to learn".

"I smack him, not in a way which is intended to hurt but to demonstrate to him that he has passed a boundary I've already defined with him," said 28-yea-old teacher Claire Boudaoud.

"And after the smack we talk about it: why I had to do it and put it into context."

Another teacher (France 2 obviously had a stock of them lined up) Chahra Joubrel was also interviewed to put forward the other point of view.

She had smacked her children in the past but now thinks it's the wrong method of disciplining a child.

"It reflects domination by the adult over the child and is certainly not in the child's best interests," she said.

And thrown in for good measure was "the expert" - this time around in the form of psychoanalyst Claude Halmos whose contribution turned what should otherwise have been an objective report into one which became the same inevitable apology for a common practice throughout the country and down the generations.

"We must not confuse systematic beating of a child with the occasional smack given by a parent who loves and respects their child but at a certain moment has no other option. That sort of example is not one of mistreating a child" she said.

Great. So now the parents who are smacking the children are the victims - or what?

And that's an essential part of the problem.

Health professionals in France, according to a poll carried out in 2010,  are overwhelmingly opposed to any sort of legislation banning smacking.

The prevailing belief it seems among most French - and even those foreigners who've chosen to live here - is that the occasional smack under the right circumstances is an effective and appropriate method of education and disciplining a child.

Just take a look at the responses to a similar post last year on the subject on a forum for English-speakers living in France.

France might "need a total ban on parents smacking kids" according to Lazimi,

But convincing lawmakers might be more than the proverbial uphill struggle.

Let's hope the video helps.

Toulouse shootings - seen from an expat bubble perspective

The deaths of three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse on Monday after an unknown gunman opened fire on them has become not only a major local and national story, but an international one too.

Shootings in Toulouse and Montauban (screenshot from France 2 news)

All major news organisations, local, regional and international, have been carrying reports on the shooting, the reactions and the link that has been established to the separate shootings and deaths of three soldiers in the same city and the nearby town of Montauban last week.

The candidates in next month's first round of the presidential elections all suspended their campaigns for one day.

The current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as his main opponent, the Socialist party candidate François Hollande, have both visited Toulouse since the shootings, as have several other candidates and current government ministers.

A minute's silence was held in schools throughout the country on Tuesday.

Turn on the radio or the television or pick up a newspaper and you'll more than likely catch an update on who has said what, speculation about the gunman's motives, the police investigation that has been launched, the concerns of parents over the safety of their children, the fears of another attack...in fact you cannot miss hearing, seeing or reading about what happened.

Not even if you're unable to speak French because BBC, CNN, Sky and others have all been covering developments.

The region of Midi-Pyrénées, in which both Toulouse and Montauban are situated, has been put on "scarlet alert", the highest terror alert in France.

So it's hard to live here and not at least have an inkling as to what happened - right?

Wrong.

This was posted on a thread about the "scarlet terror" alert in the Midi-Pyrénées on one of the many sites for mainly native English-speakers to help them get to grips with living in France.

"Please explain what you're talking about," wrote (link withheld) the contributor

"I live in L'isle-en-Dodon, Haute Garrone...! (sic)"

Just for those of you who don't know, and at the risk of being repetitive, Haute Garonne is one of the eight départements in the region of Midi-Pyrénées, and its main city is Toulouse.

L'Isle-en-Dodon is a small town (two thousand inhabitants) 70 kilometres or just over one hour's drive away from where the school shootings took place.

No comment.

Where the main candidates in the French presidential elections stand on same-sex marriage

It's French presidential election year - just in case you hadn't noticed.

That of course means a chance for each of the candidates to outline where they stand on certain issues and that includes a whole raft of social policies.

They have their differences of course. That's only to be expected.

And one area where those divergences are perhaps most marked is when it comes to the subject of same-sex marriage and parents of the same sex being allowed to adopt.

Neither are currently allowed in France, but that could all change. It depends on who wins the presidential elections.

Broadly speaking, the main candidates fall into three camps.

First of all there are those who are against same-sex marriage (Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen) or would perhaps be willing to consider modification to the existing civil partnership law (in the case of Sarkozy) and are opposed to same-sex couples being able to adopt (both Sarkozy and Le Pen).

Then there are those who are in favour of equal rights on both issues - François Hollande, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Eva Joly.

And finally there's François Bayrou, who of course manages his own particular mix of being against same-sex marriage but for a change in the civil partnership laws and in favour of same-sex couples being able to adopt.

To make things clearer on the subject, the weekly women's magazine Femme Actuelle interviewed six women; five of whom represent each of the main candidates and the sixth, Marine Le Pen, who is of course standing for the far-right Front National.

Here's what some of them had to say.

Speaking for the candidates (screenshot from Femme Actuelle video)

Claude Greff (for Sarkozy), the junior minister for family said that Sarkozy had proposed a change in the civil union in 2007 to create one that would be "specifically for same-sex couples" but it was ruled anti-constitutional.

As far as same-sex marriage is concerned, Sarkozy is against it because it "opens the door to sam-sex couples being able to adopt" and the existing laws which allows single people to adopt is sufficient as it also gives homosexuals the right to adopt.

Anne Hidalgo (for François Hollande) a member of the Socialist party's election campaign team says the belief that both should be made legal is a "right" that has been close to Hollande's heart for some time.

"It's time for politicians to catch up with public opinion and what actually happens in society," she says.

"The two issues have to be treated in the same parliamentary session and Hollande's pledge is to do that by the end of this year."

Civil union should be an absolute right for everyone as far as Bayrou is concerned. And on the question of adoption, "He is a humanist", says Marielle de Sarnez, the vice president of MoDem.

"These children (of same-sex couples) exist," she says. "

Of course adoption needs to have a judicial basis which protects the needs of the child."

Finally speaking for herself, Marine La Pen says quite categorically that she's against both.

"I think a child should have a mother and a father," she says.

While she doesn't intend to reverse the PACS, as far as same-sex marriage is concerned, it's a no-go.

"I think it's just the wishes of an extreme minority," she says.

"I know plenty of homosexuals and not one of them has spoken out in favour of wanting to get married.

Femme Actuelle also interviewed two other women; Clémentine Autain (for Jean-Luc Mélenchon), a member of the Front de Gauche campaign team, and Dominique Voynet, a spokeswoman for the Europe Écologie Les Verts candidate, Eva Joly.

On the subject of same-sex marriage and same-sex couples being allowed to adopt, they were, not surprisingly, both in agreement with Hollande.

Take a look at the remainder of the interviews if you can.

Apart from the issue of same-sex marriage and adoption, the six women are asked about the candidates' policies on the status of step-parents and universal child benefits

They're interesting, not too detailed or heavy but at the same time avoid becoming merely sound bites.

And sometimes the points on which they converge are as surprising as those on which they diverge.

Toutou rista - the Doggie Doo poop-scooping game in France

Not sure how to keep the children entertained at Christmas?

Well family games manufacturer Goliath thinks it has the answer with the release in France of Toutou rista.

Toutou rista (screenshot from promotional video)

It's the French version of the same game launched on an unsuspecting German, Spanish and Dutch market last year.

In Germany, under the name of Kackel Dackel it was a huge hit with the promotional video going viral.

None the wiser?

Well perhaps the English name will give the game (sorry) away as it's also being released in the United Kingdom and The United States under the name of Doggie Doo.

It's a game which "aims to teach children how to take care of dogs with poop-scooping gameplay" and French toy industry magazine La revue du jouet named it best infant toy game in France for 2011.

"Feed and walk your little pup, when he makes a mess you clean it up," says the game's manufacturer, Goliath.

"The first player who has 3 pieces of dog mess on his shovel wins the game."

The rules are simple although they include the rather...er...worrying extra remark, "You can only pick up the dog’s mess when it has fallen on the table. When it is hanging outside the end of the dog, just tap him on the back until it drops."

Charming!

Enough said.

"Hey honey, where's Junior?" Parents "forget" son at a roadside rest area

"Home alone" might only have been a 1990 film dreamt up by scriptwriters as a comedy in which Macaulay Culkin played the part of an eight-year-old boy mistakenly left behind when his parents fly off to Paris for their Christmas hols.

But let's face it, fact can be - and often is - stranger than fiction as the parents of an eight-year-old French boy can attest to after their weekend "lapse of memory".

They reportedly "forgot" their son on the side of the road, leaving him at a rest area and only realising he was missing half an hour later.

Lourdes Basilica (Wikipedia, author Milorad Pavlek)

The couple from the suburbs of Paris were on their way to the market town of Lourdes at the foot of the Pyrénées in southwestern France.

It is of course famous as a destination for Catholic pilgrimage and alleged miraculous healings.

They had set off on their holidays early on Saturday morning; mum, dad and three children in a camping car.

The roads were pretty busy with holidaymakers, just as they are every Saturday in August in France.

As Agence France Presse reports, at around nine o'clock in the evening, after having completed just over 700 of their 800 kilometre journey, the couple decided to take a break, and they stopped at a rest area on the nationale 21 in the département of Gers.

A few minutes later, refreshed and ready for the final stretch, they set off again, and it was only when they arrived in Lourdes that they realised one of their children was missing.

They immediately rang the emergency services, to be told that their son was with the police who had been alerted by other motorists who had seen the child alone at the rest area.

About turn - they were reunited with him a couple of hours later.

So, how could parents apparently "forget" one of their children?

It sounds even weirder than the recent case of the man who left his wife at the side of the road in the dead of night without realising she was missing.

That also happened in the southwest of France - is there something in the water perhaps?

Well there's a simple and innocent enough explanation according to the national daily France Soir.

When the family stopped, all three children were apparently asleep in the back of the camping car.

But while the parents stretched their legs, the eight-year-old slipped out without them noticing.

So they didn't really "forget" him. They just didn't realise he wasn't there.

In their infinite wisdom, the police have decided not to pursue the case, putting it all down to fatigue and a momentary lack of attention at the end of a long journey.

Maybe though, as the regional daily Midi Libre comments, the couple will light up a candle or two in thanks at their final destination.

One thing is for certain - it's a holiday neither the boy nor his parents will forget in a hurry.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy pregnancy rumours

Speculation is rife on the Net that France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is pregnant.

The source of course is an irreproachable one; the French weekly celebrity gossip magazine Closer, which asserts in its latest edition that "someone very close to the couple," had provided the information.


It's a story which really doesn't matter whether it's true. The very fact that it's out there in the public domain - albeit it Twitterdom and the less serious elements of the mainstream media - means that it has somewhat taken on a life of its own.

The presidential office - the Elysée palace - has reacted of sorts when questioned by the national weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche with "It's a matter which touches on the private life of the president" - another way of saying "No comment' in a country which has very strict laws which are largely accepted when it comes to public figures.

Perhaps that explains why the so-called story has not really made on the sites or pages of France's main newspapers and magazines, let alone the airwaves and screens of radio and television.

As Bruno Roger-Petit points out on the French website Le Post, there has been almost complete indifference from the mainstream media (other than the usual suspects) to the speculation so far.

Perhaps that's not so surprising as this is the third time in as many years that rumours have surfaced about an impending patter of tiny feet at the Elysée palace.

Just run a Google search and you'll be able to pull up umpteen articles maintaining Bruni-Sarkozy has at one point or another been expecting.

Be that as it may, Closer is sticking to its guns this time around.

The editor of the magazine, Laurence Pieau, confirmed the "scoop" to the national daily Le Parisien, saying that she was certain the information was more than reliable.

"We would not have divulged the news without being completely sure," she said.

"It has been corroborated by several different sources and we are convinced that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is in the earliest weeks of her pregnancy."

The next few days and weeks will tell whether the rumour is true, but in the meantime, Closer has created a buzz, ensured its sales for the following week, and taken everyone's mind away from political affairs that might actually be of some importance over the coming year as campaigning hots up for the presidential elections in May 2012.

French woman receives six-month suspended sentence for smacking her child

Screenshot from Council of Europe video "Raise your hand against smacking"

"Yes I was smacked and it never did me any harm. In fact I deserved it," said one caller to Jean-Marc Morandini's 'phone-in programme on Europe 1 radio on Thursday.

"Smacking is not the same as child abuse, don't try to exaggerate," said another.

Both were responding to comments by Morandini's invited guest, paediatrician Edwige Antier, who was on the show to talk about spanking and the need for a law in France to ban it.

Antier was defending a ruling earlier this week in which a court in northern France gave a woman a six-month suspended sentence and ordered her to receive psychological counselling, after finding her guilty of wilful violence towards a minor for having slapped her nine-year-old daughter.

The incident that led to the woman being found guilty dates back to last December.

As reported in the French media, the woman, who had apparently been drinking, slapped her daughter during an argument at home.

The girl ran out of the house and into the street where she was intercepted by a passerby who happened to be a social worker.

Seeing the state the girl was in, the social worker took her to the nearest police station.

Her mother was then brought in for questioning and charged.

"The punishment is totally out of proportion," said the woman's lawyer, Alice Cohen-Sabban, after the suspended sentence was handed down.

"She has never needed social services to intervene for anything, she has never been convicted and although she had been drinking when the incident happened she is not an alcoholic," Cohen-Sabban told Agence France Presse.

But that's not quite how Antier sees it - or any other case of smacking come to that.

And when Morandini asked her whether she found the ruling "normal" the 68-year-old, who is also a member of parliament for the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) and tabled a bill in 2009 to make domestic corporal punishment unlawful in France, was quite clear about where she stands.

"Imagine you were faced with someone you knew who was much larger than you and had been drinking, and they turned round and hit you," she retorted.

"Would you find that normal?

"The law as it stands at the moment gives a mother the right to hit a child, and even a babysitter, if the motive is 'an educational one'," she continued.

"But the mother should be a 'protector' and what's needed in France is a law, as exists in 18 other European countries, abolishing the right parents have to hit a child."

Not many of the callers to the programme seemed to agree with her.

Nor did a lot of the comments left on French websites such as that of Le Point or Radio France Internationale in reaction to the suspended sentence handed down to the woman and the issue of smacking in general.

Ranging from " it doesn't do any harm," through "limits need to be set and children have to be disciplined" to "the sentencing in this case will just do more harm than good to the family and especially the girl involved," it certainly seems as though Antier's views put her in the minority.

And that's perhaps not surprising as a poll conducted among health professionals in France just last year showed that 88 per cent of them were against the introduction of a law banning smacking.

Domestic corporal punishment, of which smacking is one form, is against the law in many European countries, but not in France.

In 2008 the Council of Europe launched its "Raise your hand against smacking campaign" and called on all member states to pass laws prohibiting all forms of corporal punishment of children, including smacking.

Hoax drug scare hits French schools

Local authority offices in the southwestern French département of Haute Garonne have reportedly been inundated in recent weeks with 'phones calls, letters and emails from concerned parents.

They were all acting on information that had dropped into their inboxes or they had read on the Net that the drug, "Strawberry quick" or "Strawberry meth", a flavoured crystal meth, was circulating in the area's schools.

"Strawberry quick" (snapshot from YouTube video)

Appearing to have been sent by the local authority and stamped with the official logo of the French interior ministry, the email warned that a "new drug" was being passed around and used in schools in the area.

"Children eat the drugs thinking they're sweets," read the email.

"And shortly afterwards they're admitted to hospital suffering from a number of side effects" it warned, stating that the local health authority had put in place a special unit to deal with the problem.

But according to the local authority, the alarm was nothing but a hoax and there was no need to be concerned.

In a statement it urged parents against passing the information on to others and an official, Loïc Armand, said that, "No special child protection unit had been set up as suggested in the email."

France is not alone in having had a hoax scare surrounding Strawberry quick.

It made its first "appearance" in 2007 when an identical rumour made the headlines in the United States after emails began to circulate suggesting that unsuspecting children were being given the drug.

And in March 2008 police in the British county of Oxfordshire sent out a warning to at least 80 schools after acting on a similar email hoax.

French bank reveals Santa doesn't exist!

The French bank Crédit Mutuel is in hot water with parents after a commercial it aired revealed that Father Christmas doesn't exist.

The spot only lasts 20 seconds, but it has been the subject of controversy for the best part of a week.

It features a father offering up his adult son some "sound" financial advice, insisting that banks touch a commission whenever they carry out transactions on behalf of their clients.

"I have some bad news for you," the father says to his son right at the beginning of the commercial.

"Father Christmas doesn't really exist."

Crédit Mutuel; "Father Christmas doesn't really exist" (snapshot from commercial)

All right, all right. So nothing too controversial in that. After all he doesn't really exist that is in any tangible sense (apologies to those of you who've just had a myth destroyed).

He is of course a figure used by parents to...well an explanation isn't really necessary, surely.

The problem, apparently as far as many parents in France are concerned, comes not with the commercial or its message so much as with its placement; as it was broadcast immediately before the animated Walt Disney film "Ratatouille" aired on TF1 a week last Sunday.

It is of course a movie aimed primarily at children, and plenty of them were reportedly in front of the box eagerly awaiting the start when their illusions were shattered.

And even though some might think parents were overreacting, a psychologist insisted that finding out in such a way that Santa doesn't really exist could have a detrimental effect on young children.

"Being told so suddenly that Father Christmas is imaginary could be viewed (by children) as a punishment or a lie," children's psychologist Sonia Ouali told the French website Rue89.

"Denying this imaginary figure (in such a manner) is like taking away part of childhood."

Crédit Mutuel's initial reaction was to try to play down the growing storm of protest.

"It would be a mistake to withdraw the commercial," its communications director, Bernard Sadoun, told Rue89.

"The whole controversy has been taken totally out of context."

But in an effort to diffuse mounting criticism, including a Facebook group protesting the commercial, it subsequently contributed to the debate by posting its own message in threads in which it promised it would "only air the spot after 8;30pm to reduce its impact on young children."

Pub Scandale : Le père Noël n'existe pas Vidéo jeanmarcmorandini sélectionnée dans Pub

"Miracle" of Parisian toddler surviving seven-storey fall - where were the parents?

You might remember the tale of the 18-month-old "miracle baby" who fell from the seventh floor of a building in Paris on Monday afternoon, but survived the fall unharmed after he landed in the arms of a passerby.

It was a story that made the national headlines of television, press and radio.

Tabac le Vincennes - awning which broke the toddler's fall (screenshot BFM television)

The accumulation of events made it even more of a miracle than it at first appeared; the boy's fall being broken by the awning of a café closed for All Saints Day holiday, the fact that the awning should have been folded, but the device for closing it hadn't been working the day before, and of course the passerby, Philippe Bensignor, who happened to be on hand to catch the boy in his arms.

Dr. Philippe Bensignor who caught the 18-month-old toddler (screenshot France 2 television)

But but one vital question remains unanswered. Where were the child's parents?

The toddler had been playing with his three-year-old sister before the incident, but apparently they had been left alone in the apartment for at least a couple of hours.

"When we managed to get into the apartment we looked around to see whether the children's mother was home," Samia Benmoussa, a neighbour in the same building told Europe 1 national radio.

"There was nobody else apart from the little girl crying."

The parents had reportedly been out 'taking a walk" and only returned a couple of hours after the afternoon's drama.

Police took the couple in for questioning and they remained in custody until Wednesday morning before being released to appear before a court in two months to face charges of "neglect and unintentional injury".

L'actualité sociale

French holiday "miracle baby" stories

Extra value in this end-of-year piece in that it's a "triple pack" if you will.

Three stories connected to each other only in the sense that they all happened in France over the past week and in each instance involved a baby or a young child.

In two of the cases, the child survived in circumstances that really didn't bode well - to say the very least.

In the third...well it's just an uplifting tale that's surely guaranteed to warm the heart and bring a smile to even the most curmudgeonly reader.

There's sadness in the tale of the first "miracle baby", a 20-month-old girl from the town of Harfleur in northern France.

Just a couple of days before Christmas her 26-year-old mother, who was going through a separation, made her way to the cliffs of the nearby coastal town of Étretat and jumped to her death, her daughter in her arms.

An alert had been raised earlier in the afternoon by the woman's husband who had reportedly 'phoned the emergency services to say that he was concerned about her mental state and the welfare of the child after they had left the family home in nearby Harfleur.

Helicopters were dispatched in the area and two bodies spotted at the foot of the cliffs.

"The mother gave no sign of life, but the girl blinked," Christopher Margrit, a spokesman for the emergency services said.

The girl was rushed to hospital with a head injury and several fractures, her survival attributed to the fact that her body had probably been cushioned by the body of her mother in the 70-metre fall.

On Monday a two-year-old boy also escaped death, this time unscathed, in the ski resort of Arêches-Beaufort in the French Alps.

He was buckled into the child seat as his parents were unloading the car when, in spite of the hand brake being on, the vehicle began sliding backwards.

Although his mother and aunt tried in vain to rescue him, they couldn't reach him in time and the car fell 70 metres into a ravine near where it had been parked, saved from overturning by coming to rest on a tree stump.

When the emergency services arrived on the scene they were able to free the child, who was apparently still ensconced in his seat and emerged without a scratch.

The only injury incurred in the incident was to the aunt who had a fallen into the ravine in her rescue attempt. She was hospitalised with a suspected broken leg.

And finally, as promised, that heart-warming tale, which involves life rather than death in the shape of Tyfène, a 12-year-old girl in the north-west of the country who acted as the midwife in the birth of her sister.

She has become a veritable heroine in France after her exploits on December 26.

When her mother, Stéphanie, went into labour early in the morning the day after Christmas, the father-to-be, Fabrice Raoult, proved to be less than up to the task of handling the situation, and it was Tyfène who took matters in hand.

She dispatched him into the garden "to get some fresh air", rang the emergency services to inform them that the contractions had begun, but was informed there would probably be some delay in their arrival because driving conditions were difficult with black ice covering the roads on the way to the hamlet of Couëdic where the family lived.

The 12-year-old (and it's probably worth repeating that) kept her cool though.

"After a moment of panic, I quickly came to my senses and realised I was the only one who could help," she confidently recounted after the event.

"The baby came out and I washed and placed her on mummy's tummy," she continued rather matter-of-factly in numerous interviews she has given since.

"I didn't dare cut the cord but five minutes later the emergency services arrived to do that," she added.

Just for the record, baby sister Maëlys weighed in at 3,380kg and she, along with mother and older sister are doing just fine.

So is the father apparently, who by all accounts is rightly proud of his 12-year-old step daughter.

French support gay parents' adoption rights

According to a survey carried out by BVA for the television channel Canal +, 57 per cent of those questioned think gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to adopt while 41 per cent are against.

In a similar poll carried out three years ago only 48 per cent of the French were in favour of gay couples having the right to adopt.

Coming just days after a court in the eastern French town of Besançon overruled a regional assembly's decision which had prevented a 48-year-old lesbian from adopting child, the issue on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt now seems to be a matter of public debate.

Reaction to the latest survey from the governing centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) party came swiftly as its leader, Xavier Bertrand, was the invited guest on the Canal + early morning news magazine, La Matinale.

And as far as Bertrand was concerned there would be no change in his party's opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt.

"There's a lot of talk today about the right to have a child, but for me the priority has to be the rights of the child," he said.

"In a society where there's constant upheaval and change a child needs to have a point of reference, and that means having a mother and a father," he added.

While Bertrand's views might reflect those of many in his party, there are others who at least want the issue debated.

Most notably the junior minister for family, Nadine Morano, who said on national radio earlier in the week that while there were no government plans to change the law, it was nonetheless something that warranted discussion.

"The debate needs to be opened," she said.

"Why not during the next presidential election in 2012?" she added.

"France needs to deal with its hypocrisy," she continued, perhaps a reference to the fact that adoption by single gay men or lesbians is allowed in France and there are currently 30,000 children living in single-parent gay families.

Another member of the government, Hervé Morin, who is leader of the centre-right Nouveau Centre (New Centre) and also the French defence minister went further saying that he was in favour of homosexual couples being allowed to adopt.

France steps up H1N1 vaccination campaign

A large proportion of a still sceptical French public will decide for itself this week whether to be inoculated against "swine flu" (H1N1 or influenza A as it's more commonly called here) as the government's vaccination campaign steps up a notch.

On Monday the health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, announced that over one thousand special centres would be open from November 12 and around six million French would be receiving letters this week encouraging them to go along and get vaccinated.

Among those given priority in the next stage of vaccinating the population at large are parents and childminders of infants under six months of age, health workers who haven't yet had the jab and the "more vulnerable" among the French especially those with respiratory problems.

From the second half of November until the end of the month letters will be sent out to other sectors of the population according to their perceived level of risk.

Pregnant women, who are also considered a priority, will have to wait until the vaccine that doesn't contain the chemical additive adjuvant is given the government's green light, while vaccination of the country's 12 million school children is scheduled to begin from November 25, with the education minister, Luc Chatel, stressing last weekend that it would be entirely voluntary with the decision being left to parents.

Adults over the age of 18 and in good health will be the last to receive a letter inviting them to be vaccinated.

So all well and good with the government finally delivering on its promise to be in a position to vaccinate the entire population.

It has in total ordered 94 million doses of the vaccine.

But in spite of the government's campaign and an increase in the both the number of confirmed cases in recent weeks and deaths reported linked to the H1N1 virus, the French seem to remain largely unimpressed with the most recent poll indicating that only 21 per cent of them intended to get themselves vaccinated.

And although Bachelot remains upbeat about the 10 per cent of health professionals who have so far voluntarily turned up for the jab since the vaccination became available to them as a priority last month, even she has had to admit that the figure is "insufficient".

Belgium - Baby "forgotten" in car all day dies

Summer has arrived in Europe and with it once again another of what seems to be an all-too-often reported and at the same time incomprehensible tragedy - that of a baby left in a car all day.

On Monday police in the Belgian town of Louvain confirmed that an 11-month-old girl died last week of dehydration after her father had left her in the back seat of his vehicle while he was at work.

He reportedly forgot beforehand to drop his daughter Britt off at the crèche, and she remained in the car all day - with the outside temperature at around 21 degrees.

Her body was discovered later by her mother when, as was her habit, she went to take the baby seat from the husband's car before driving to the crèche to collect her daughter.

Reading or hearing reports of animals left in cars is surely bad enough. Ignorance perhaps could be an explanation as to why owners often mistakenly assume that a few moments spent away from the vehicle won't do any harm.

However as any animal lover will surely know, and even those who don't own a pet would probably realise, the temperature inside a vehicle can rise quickly, even when it's not high summer. And the outcome is inevitable.

But when it comes to "forgetting a child" it's perhaps harder to understand what's going through - or better put, not going through - the parent's mind.

Last summer in France within the space of a month three separate cases made the national headlines (you can read more details here).

Two of them mirrored last week's Belgian tragedy; professional fathers leaving their children alone in the car after being "distracted" or "forgetting".

In the third, that of a mother leaving her two-and-a-half-year-old girl in the back seat while she did some last-minute shopping, the actions of passers-by avoided the repetition of another family tragedy.

At the time those incidents gave rise to plenty of debate as to why or how they could have occurred.

Burn out, a moment of absence and the pressures of modern life seemed to be at least to be part of the explanation offered up by experts who said that such incidents were more frequent than might at first be imagined.

"For sure these are not isolated cases, but usually they don't end in such a dramatic way," the child psychiatrist Sylvie Angel said in an interview in the weekly news magazine L'Express after the death of two-and-a-half-year-old Yannis in July last year and just a week later that of three-year-old Zoé.

A view backed up at the time by Jean-Michel Muller, president of the Association of Paediatricians of Nice Côte d'Azur, who said that it could happen to anyone.

"If you ask those to whom this has happened, they know that children shouldn't be left alone in the car, but at that particular moment their minds are elsewhere, they have some other problem," he said.

That "moment of absence" was also how Eric Allarousse accounted for having left his son, Yannis, in the car when he appeared in court last December to face charges of involuntary homicide.

It was a trial, which in itself demonstrated a difference in approach between France and Belgium to what is undoubtedly in all cases a family tragedy.

In France both fathers were initially charged with involuntary homicide, with the case of Allarousse going to trial because the public prosecutor wanted to " make public opinion more aware of the dangers and prevent similar incidents happening."

In Belgium though, the justice system seems to be showing a little more compassion for the family with Louvain's assistant prosecutor, Philippe Fontaine, saying no charges would be made.

"This isn't a case of a child being mistreated, but one of a regrettable accident," he said.

Let's hope it's the last such accident to occur here, in Belgium or in any other country for that matter.

Agreement possible in French-Russian child custody battle

An end could be in sight in the battle over the custody of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl who has been at the centre of a dispute between her parents for much of her short life and has been kidnapped on three occasions.

Both parents could be about to sign an agreement which would give them shared custody over Elise, the daughter of a Russian-born mother, Irina Belenkaya, and a French father, Jean-Michel André.

The last time Elise was abducted was on March 20 in the southern French city of Arles, when she was taken by two men dressed as security guards and a woman.

Her father was left badly beaten, and French police put out an alerte de l'enlèvement (the equivalent of an amber alert) on nation-wide basis, later extending it throughout the whole of Europe.

On April 12, Elise was found safe and sound by Hungarian police in the company of her mother as Belenkaya attempted to cross the border with her daughter into Ukraine.

Belenkaya was detained and André flew to Hungary to collect his daughter and bring her back to France.

The case has always been particularly complex because both parents have been awarded individual custody of Elise by courts in their respective countries.

Similarly both are liable to prosecution for abduction in one another's countries; Belenkaya in France and André in Russia.

When the couple split three years ago, a French court gave André custody of their daughter.

But just one month later she was kidnapped by Belenkaya and taken to Moscow.

An international arrest warrant was issued for the mother at the time but Russia refused to comply or even acknowledge it, and instead gave Belenkaya custody over her daughter.

So a stalemate was reached, with French courts having given André custody while as far as Russia was concerned Belenkaya was completely within her rights.

In September 2008 André flew to Moscow to find his daughter and for the second time she was abducted, although without any violence according to André.

Again the two countries' legal systems differed as to the rights of the parents.

As far as France was concerned, André had acted within his legal rights to bring Elise back to this country, while the authorities in Moscow said he had breached Russian custody law.

Now after this third - and hopefully final - kidnapping, an amicable agreement between Belenkaya and André could be on the cards, according to reports in the French media.

It has been hammered out by lawyers representing both parents and would allow Elise to live as near normal a life as possible, without two parents tussling over custody rights.

Belenkaya has reportedly agreed to terms that would mean she would have access to Elise under French law, admit her role before French courts in the most recent kidnapping of her daughter and in particular the attack on André, and most importantly accept shared custody.

It's not yet a done deal though. André still has to sign and it has to be approved by French courts.

And there's still the matter of whether Belenkaya will be extradited to France even though she has already agreed to appear before the courts in this country.

On Wednesday Hungarian authorities signed an order for her extradition which could take place within the next two weeks, but her lawyer immediately launched an appeal.

So the whole process of an amicable solution could still hang in the balance.

But in spite of that, André's lawyer, Victor Gioia, is still upbeat that an end to the long-running custody battle is just within reach.

"It's a mother who committed an act of folly through love," Gioia said on French television.

"She must be capable of explaining that, and she has been well advised and we're on the right road for finding a solution - a solution for Elise," he added.

Girl in custody battle back in France with father

This is a follow-up to a piece that first appeared here last month.

You might remember the story of Elise, the three-and-a-half-year-old girl who was abducted in the southern French city of Arles on March 20.

Her father, Jean-Michel André, was left badly beaten, an alerte de l'enlèvement (the equivalent of an amber alert) raised and French police put out a nation-wide search, which was later extended throughout the whole of Europe for the girl and her Russian-born mother, Irina Belenkaya

On Sunday Elise was found safe and sound in Hungary, close to the border with the Ukraine.

Police there detained the mother and Elise was reunited with her father on Monday, with Victor Gioia, the lawyer for André confirming that his client had flown to Hungary to collect his daughter and said that the goal now was "to try to avoid yet another trauma in the girl's life."

Elise has been abducted three times since the couple split in 2007.

"The father's intention was not to start another battle with the girl's mother, but to find a solution that would allow their daughter to have a more-or-less normal life," Gioia told French media.

He also added that his client would not be pressing charges against Belenkaya who is due to appear before a court in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, on Wednesday.

And on Tuesday afternoon André and Elise arrived back in France.

While the story seems to have had a happy end - at least as far as the father and French law are concerned - it still leaves a lot of issues unresolved.

The case remains particularly complex because both parents have been awarded individual custody of Elise by courts in their respective countries.

Similarly both are liable to prosecution for abduction in one another's countries; Belenkaya in France and André in Russia.

According to the national daily, Le Figaro, the French authorities will be getting in touch with their Russian counterparts in the coming days to "try to find a solution for the family that is in the best interests of the child."

For its part Russia says although it judged Elise's return to her father to have been "premature" it has proposed to France that the two countries try to co-operate to find a solution to the dispute between not just the two parents but also the two countries' legal differences.

"We have a case which is very complicated from the judicial perspective," said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday.

"That's why we want to propose to France that experts from both sides undertake a concrete consultation process."

Boys who "disappeared" with their father 11 years ago speak out

In 1998 two boys, aged six and seven, were declared missing after their father, Xavier Fortin, abducted his sons rather than return them to their mother who had custody of both.

At least that was how the story was first reported when the boys were "discovered" last week in the village of Masset in the département of l'Ariège in the southwest of the country, where they had been living with their father.

It's a tale which has lasted more than a decade but has been unfolding over the past week.

Fortin is currently in police custody.

The two boys, Théo and Manu (they changed their names during their years "on the run" from Okwari and Shahi-Yena) now 17 and 18 respectively, have spoken publicly for the first time about how they went "missing and their desire now to see their 52-year-old father released.

In an interview with the regional daily, La Dépêche du Midi, they gave an insight into their "secret" life, how they had chosen to remain with their father all those years ago rather than return to their mother, and maintained that they hadn't been held against their will.

Before the boys disappeared they said that they had always lived a marginalised kind of existence but it had been a happy childhood in a solid family structure.

"When relations between our parents started to deteriorate we were seven and eight and our mother wanted to remove us from what we knew - just like that," they said.

"We weren't able to see our father, our mother worked and we lived in an apartment and we were looked after by a childminder."

When in December 1998 Fortin was allowed access rights during the Christmas holidays the "adventure" began for the two boys.

"At that age it wasn't possible to make a choice between our mother and our father, we just opted for a life which would make us happiest," they said.

"When it started, we treated it as a game."

The boys reveal that over more than a decade they frequently changed both location and name.

But they insist they were far from being social outcasts and on the contrary had met an incredible number of people.

"It has been an enriching experience," they told the newspaper.

They explain how their father, a qualified teacher, gave them lessons at home and they insist that they'd had a first rate education.

"Those who think we were in some way modern day Mowglis, our answer is that we are 10 times more mature than others of our age."

And moreover Fontin had never prevented them from getting in touch with their mother.

"Our father made us write to her often. She never replied," they said.

Their goal now is to rebuild a relationship with their mother and to see their father released from police custody.

So a very different perspective to the one that might have initially appeared in the media on what happened over the course of a decade from those whose story it, after all, is.

But wait, there is of course another side to all of this - that of the mother, Catherine Martin.

And the day after Théo and Manu gave their exclusive to La Dépêche du Midi, Martin's response and reaction could be read in the national daily, Le Parisien.

The 45-year old said she had spent the last decade hoping to hear from her two sons and contrary to what they had implied in their interview, they had not written directly to her over the years.

"There were only four letters addressed to the magistrate (following the case) dictated by Xavier Fortin and copied by the children," she said.

"And just once there was a letter posted from Morocco when their photos had been published, to say that there had been no "abduction" involved."

Although Martin had custody of the two children and had the full force of French justice on her side, in that the two boys were taken and hidden from her without her consent, she is not going to press ahead with a civil suit in which she would be the "victim"

Instead she wants to help pave the way to building a relationship with both of them.

She has entrusted the delicate task of going about rebuilding a relationship with the two sons she hasn't seen since 1998 to their brother and her oldest son, 24-year-old Nicolas.

"Every word, every false move could hurt them, and a compromise has to be found," she says.

"They still feel divided. It has become their obsession to support their father and prevent him from being imprisoned.

Martin said that in a recent discussion she had with Théo and Manu, one of them told her that they had always been on the move, staying with travellers or the circus.

"He (Fortin) told everyone around him that he was a widow and the boys were instructed to say that I was dead."

For her though the lost years are not as important as now looking forward to the future.

"None of that really matters now," she said

So there you have it. The same story told form different perspectives and a mother beginning to rediscover two of her sons after more than a decade of separation.

Their father, Fortin, is due to appear in court on March 17

There's nothing like good neighbours - again

A mother and her two children were discovered dead this week in their apartment in the southern French city of Marseille.

It's a sad story - the sort which frequently seems to make the headlines and one that would otherwise probably go relatively unnoticed had it not been for one particular aspect.

According to preliminary investigations the three bodies had been lying undetected in the flat for the best part of a month.

Just as in the case of a 70-year-old man, whose mummified body was discovered in his apartment after three years last August, so this latest incident surely makes anyone wonder "where were the neighbours?"

The body of the 39-year-old woman was found on her bed, and next to it those of her two children, her eight-year-old daughter and a baby girl of a couple of months.

The decomposing bodies were discovered by the woman's former partner and father of the two children. The couple had been estranged for almost a year.

According to local police the bodies were in a state of "advanced decomposition" and an autopsy to be carried out on all three would reveal the exact cause of death.

For the moment, investigators are following three different paths. Either the mother killed her two children and then committed suicide, or all three were murdered, or the deaths were accidental.

Police said that the woman had been in severe financial difficulty and the rent on the apartment had not been paid for several months.

The father has been taken in for questioning and is being held in custody for "failure to render assistance to a person in danger."

But whatever the outcome of those investigations, there still remains the question of why neither neighbours nor anyone in the local community noticed.

Perhaps the report carried on Wednesday's lunchtime news on France 2 television sheds some light on how a woman, living in this country as an illegal immigrant (sans papiers) who by all accounts very much kept herself to herself, and her two children could die and their bodies remain undetected without anyone realising.

"I knew she had been pregnant and had given birth. I heard the baby crying from time to time," a neighbour living on the same floor told reporters.

"After that we heard nothing and we simply thought she had left, preferring to flee the apartment with all the financial problems she had."

Not surprisingly perhaps the woman didn't want to show her face to the cameras.

And from a local shopkeeper who had seen the daughter a couple of times when she had come into his store and tried to pay with a cheque, there was a similar sort of "explanation".

"As she was a young girl of around eight years of age I told her I couldn't accept the cheque and she would have to return home and ask an adult - one of her parents - to come along with the cheque and proof of identity. Neither she nor one of her parents returned," he said.

"We didn't realise," said another shopkeeper. "We lead our lives without realising the dramas that go on around us."

It's certainly not the first time this sort of sad story has occurred, and it probably won't be the last - either here in France are elsewhere.

But it surely still leaves more than just a bad taste in the mouth.

Once again it's probably worth reflecting on a campaign that began here in France back in 1999 "La Fête des voisins" or "Neighbours day".

From humble beginnings with just 10,000 participants taking part in 80 buildings dotted around the country's capital, the event has grown to more than six million people in 600 local authorities throughout France, according to organisers' figures for 2008.

Since 2004 the concept has been exported to many other parts of Europe with Journée européenne des voisins (European neighbours' day) in around 150 towns and cities.

Sadly, for the mother and her two children such neighbourliness isn't "celebrated" until May.

Launch of TV spot on Internet dangers for children

The French government has given the go-ahead for a television campaign aimed at highlighting the potential dangers children may face from the Internet.

Starting this week, and in the run-up to Christmas, TV channels will carry free of charge, a commercial encouraging parents to be more aware of the potential risks their children are running from indiscriminate use of the Net.

And it will be backed up by an information campaign offering advice on what options are also available for computers within the home at least, for filtering access to certain sites.

TV spot

The move follows the highly publicised case last week in France in which a 14-year old girl went missing for five days.

It transpired that she had been in contact over the previous three weeks with a man through an Internet chat room and had travelled half way across the country to meet him.

He was a 44-year-old convicted paedophile, who had been released from prison in August, and when the girl was eventually traced, the initial media reports suggested that he had held her captive.

As it turned out when the girl was questioned by police, she said had not been held she against her will, and had consented to sex with the man.

He has since been charged with unlawful sex with a minor, and could face a 10-year prison sentence, as he is a repeat offender.

With that case the focus of media attention the press conference to launch the campaign to raise public awareness of the potential risks of the Net, couldn't have been better timed and the junior minister for family, Nadine Morano; said the campaign provided the best means of preventing such cases occurring.

"While adolescent boys prefer to play video games (on the computer) girls are more involved in chatrooms," she insisted.

"There's not one week goes by when a young girl in France doesn't find herself faced with a problem whose roots can be traced back to the Net," she added.

"Statistics show that around 62 per cent of parents aren't even aware that their children have a blog."

Both the government's campaign and similar ones from organisations such as Association e-enfance, which provides guidelines for parents and children alike on "safe Internet use", recognise that there is a balance to be struck between "protecting" a child - and in particular adolescent girls - without encroaching on their "secret garden" or right to privacy.

But access to the Net via a home computer is only part of the problem, according to Christine du Fretay, the president of Association e-enfance.

"Often young girls access the Net through their mobile 'phones and give out all manner of intimate information," she warns.

"They don't realise and don't have the capacity to measure the impact of what they're doing, especially as it's something that they probably wouldn't do face-to-face".

While admitting that the problem is far more wide reaching than a simple issue of Internet use within the home; Morano hopes that the latest campaign will open up a broader discussion of the issue, and that parents will take the initiative.

"We will launch a working group to educate young people not just about the Internet, but also about the media in general," she said.

"Parents must talk about the Net with their children who are alone in front of the screen."

The television spot (see accompanying video) which starts airing in France this week, is a German production that has been translated into several languages and has already been broadcast in a number of European countries.

France – drunk, drugged and behind the wheel

Perhaps this short post should be tagged from the beginning as opinion. But surely nobody could disagree that what follows was from the moment the main protagonist turned the ignition key, a combination of a deadly cocktail and sheer stupidity.

More details have now been released about a tragic accident that occurred in Allouagne in northern France last weekend, which left a 38-year-old man critically injured and in a coma, and his three-year-old son dead.

It happened in the early evening as a young woman was driving back to her parents. According to eyewitnesses, the 20-year-old motorist appeared to lose control of her car and cut down the bicycle of the small boy - killing him on the spot - and then hit his father who was walking alongside him.

A heartbreaking incident under any circumstances, but it made the headlines here in France because the woman was not only drunk at the wheel of the car, but she also admitted later that she had been smoking cannabis the night before.

Tests by police afterwards revealed that she had a level of more than 2.17 grammes of alcohol per litre in her blood – the legal limit in France is 0.5 grammes per litre.

She too was injured in the accident and taken to a nearby hospital in serious condition. Investigators said she probably wasn’t wearing a seat belt at the time. The woman herself doesn’t even recall getting into her car.

But the full story of her complete and total irresponsibility doesn’t end there – as difficult as at it might be to believe.

When police were able to question her later in the week, the woman apparently also confessed to having been in the process of writing a text message at the moment of impact!

Her memory perhaps too short to remember getting behind the wheel of the car, but apparently sufficiently alert to retain exactly what she was doing immediately before she destroyed a life.