****** a 'fundamental right', German committee says
Anti-****** laws in Germany could be scrapped after a government-backed group said relationships between brothers and sisters should be legal
Laws banning ****** between brothers and sisters in Germany could be scrapped after a government ethics committee said the they were an unacceptable intrusion into the right to sexual self-determination.
“Criminal law is not the appropriate means to preserve a social *****,” the German Ethics Council said in a statement. “The fundamental right of adult ******** to sexual self-determination is to be weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the ******.”
Their intervention follows a notorious case in which a ******* and ****** living as partners in Saxony had four ******** together. The couple had been raised separately and only met when the *******, identified only as Patrick S, was an adult, and his ****** Susan K was 16.
Patrick S was sentenced to more than three years in prison for ****** and the couple have since failed in their bid to have the guilty verdict overturned by the European Court of Human Rights.
The ****** was ****** to live apart after the courts ruled that there was a duty to protect their ******** from the consequences of their relationship.
Two of the couple’s ******** are disabled, and it is believed that ****** carries a higher risk of resulting in ******** with genetic abnormalities.
But the Ethics Council dismissed that argument, on the basis that other genetically affected couples are not ****** from having ********.
The Council said it based its recommendation on extensive research, in which it found many ********** couples are ****** to live in secret.
In one case, it found a woman was being *********** by her ****** and ex-husband, who threatened to depive her of access to her ******** unless she ended a new relationship with her half-*******.
****** remains ******* in the UK and most European countries, although France abolished its ****** laws under Napoleon I and there has been growing debate over the ***** in Germany.
Around two to four per cent of Germans have had “********** experiences”, according to an estimate by the Max Planck Institute.
But a spokeswoman for Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats indicated the government was unlikely to adopt the Ethics Council’s recommendations.
“The abolition of the offense of ****** between ******** would be the wrong signal,” said Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker, legal policy spokeswoman for the party’s group in parliament.
“Eliminating the threat of punishment against ********** acts within families would run counter to the protection of undisturbed development for ********.”
