Shame has a face since the annual Paris demonstration We allSaturday, November 22nd. During a march against violence against women, Ersilia Soudais, a member of parliament for La France Insoumise (LFI) representing Seine-et-Marne, was questioned about rapes committed by foreigners, stating that they were "anecdotal." This statement, made on Saturday, provoked an immediate outcry. "Are you out of your mind? Are you going to say that to women who are victims of foreign rapists?" reacted Alice Cordier, a leading figure in the Collectif Némésis.
Alice Cordier's outburst following Ersilia Soudais' remarks
In the video released this weekend, the left-wing MP explains that "nine out of ten women know their rapist," before accusing the Némésis collective of "instrumentalizing feminism for racist ends." For her, pointing the finger at foreign perpetrators would amount to diverting the debate and, above all, stigmatizing. An indefensible attempt at relativization, denounced by Alice Cordier on CNEWS this morning:
“Would she be able to say that to the eyes of women raped by foreigners? Will she say that to Philippine’s mother, who was raped and killed by a foreigner under a deportation order, to Lola’s mother, to all those families of victims who will never see their daughters again or whose lives have been shattered? (…) At what point does a woman, at a demonstration against violence against women, explain that some violence against thousands of women is a mere detail?”
While the overrepresentation of foreigners in crime is a subject of debate, the figures from the Ministry of the Interior are nonetheless clear: in 2024, out of 122,000 sexual assaults, 13% of those implicated were foreign nationals, representing 15,940 attacks. For rapes and attempted rapes, this represents 6,482 victims.
Overrepresentation of foreigners, everywhere in France
This is without even mentioning the statistics on sexual violence recorded on public transport. According to the Ministry of the Interior, 62% of perpetrators are foreign nationals. This is a reality experienced daily by millions of women, forced to alter their routes, schedules, or even avoid certain modes of transport altogether for fear of being assaulted. And this phenomenon is no longer limited to the Paris region: outside of Île-de-France, the proportion of foreign perpetrators of sexual violence committed on public transport rose from 32% in 2019 to 43% in 2023 (again, according to the Ministry of the Interior), an increase of more than ten percentage points in just four years. The impact of migration on the surge in sexual assaults is no longer just a problem in the Paris region, but a reality that now affects female users throughout the country.
In this context, dismissing these acts of violence as "anecdotal" is not only an analytical error but also a statistical denial and an insult to the thousands of women who suffer these attacks every year. Denouncing the supposed "racism" of identity-based feminists to minimize the violence suffered by thousands of French women assaulted by foreigners, both legal and undocumented, leaves a bitter taste. And those who, like Claire Geronimi, pay the ultimate price, no longer have the patience to hear that this is merely a minor detail.
