By Stefania Rousselle
Seeking Sexual Surrogates: In France, sexual surrogates for disabled people are not permitted, but some are pushing to make the practice legal.
GRENOBLE, France — In her sexual fantasies, she is a fit and impetuous blonde who dominates her male partners. In real life, she is a virgin who relies on an electric wheelchair, her body touched only by home care aides and medical personnel.
"A disabled person is seen as a child," said the woman in the wheelchair, Laetitia Rebord, 31. "So inevitably, child and sex don't go together." A translator and teacher, she has a genetic spinal muscular atrophy that has left her entirely paralyzed, except for her left thumb and her facial muscles.
Ms. Rebord, who says she feels physical sensation acutely, has looked for sexual relationships through friends of friends and men on dating sites and even with male escorts. But her disability has scared many away, and she says she is now ready to pay for sex in Switzerland or Germany, where so-called sexual surrogates are legal.
Stories like Ms. Rebord's are far from unusual in France, where behind a facade of sexual freedom, disabled people struggle to have a sex life. But their desires are often disregarded, and while prostitution is legal here, soliciting potential clients and serving as an intermediary between prostitutes and clients are not.
The issue of sexual surrogates came up in March, after the National Ethics Committee, which advises the government on health issues, issued a report criticizing the practice as the "unethical use of the human body for commercial purposes." The report, commissioned in 2011, was approved by government officials, including Marie-Arlette Carlotti, a junior minister responsible for issues involving those with disabilities, who called sexual assistance for disabled people "a form of prostitution."
But encouraged in part by the publicity around "The Sessions," a 2012 American movie about the sexual awakening of a disabled man by a sexual surrogate, some legislators and associations of disabled people are demanding the legalization of sexual surrogates.
"Prostitution is a fake debate; the goals are different," said Pascale Ribes, who in 2011 founded the Disabilities and Sexualities Group, an association defending sexual surrogates in France.
"Sexual assistance is about allowing a disabled person who can't access sexuality in a satisfying way to reconnect with the body," Ms. Ribes said.
Her association is lobbying for a change in the law to allow disabled people, their parents, their friends or directors of approved institutions to arrange meetings with sexual surrogates, who typically charge around $130 a session. She speaks of the "sexual distress" of many of France's 1.8 million disabled people of working age, especially women.
Some need sexual assistance to recover their sexual drive after an accident, Ms. Ribes said. Others are disabled couples who need help to "share intimate moments together." Many wish to explore their sexuality to regain self-confidence, she said. Most sexual surrogates are women, Ms. Ribes said, adding that "it is harder for disabled women rather than men to ask for a sexual surrogate."
In France, the rarity of debate over the subject, the laws regulating prostitution and the refusal to legalize sexual surrogates have encouraged illegal practices.
Aminata Gregory, 66, is Dutch. She retired as a supervisor in the construction industry, and she has been performing sexual assistance illegally in France for more than a year. She was trained as a sex therapist in Switzerland, and her work mostly involves massages and erotic games without kisses on the mouth or sex.
"If someone is in a wheelchair, I start in the wheelchair," Ms. Gregory said. "I start playing the game of getting undressed on the wheelchair. It becomes a little like a game."
Ms. Gregory's clients find her through word of mouth. She has about 10 disabled clients in France and charges them through her company in the Netherlands. Her sessions cost about $130 and often take place in her clients' houses. They begin with background checks and discussions about the clients' needs.
Stefania Rousselle contributed reporting from Vedène, France.
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