The Walloon Government has been ordered to pay up to €250,000 in compensation after a motorbike accident 21 years ago left a woman unable to orgasm.
The incident occurred when the woman – who was 42 years old at the time – fell off her motorbike into a hole while driving through a poorly signposted construction site between Sombreffe and Villers-la-Ville, just northeast of the city of Charleroi, on 2 June 2002, La Dernière Heure reports.
In court, the woman claimed that the accident caused her "irremediable damage, by falling off a motorcycle, to the genitofemoral nerve": a nerve which, when damaged, is liable to cause severe genital pain.
In a subsequent letter to her lawyer, the woman expressed "outrage" at the fact that both the Walloon Government and the company tasked with signposting the construction site (a now-bankrupt firm called Alusign) "were trying to minimise the impact that she was suffering in her life as a woman."
She also claimed that sexual rights "are part of human rights" which are "as essential for the development of women as [they are for] men."
Sexual restitution, not healing
The recent decision to award damages follows a lengthy court battle – one which dragged for decades largely because the various parties could not agree on how to monetarily quantify the harm inflicted on the woman's sex life.
In particular, on 4 June 2012 – that is, almost exactly eleven years ago, and almost precisely ten years after the accident – a Belgian court decreed that the actions of both the Walloon Government and Alusign had "contributed to the same extent" to the incident and subsequent damage caused.
More specifically, the former was found guilty of "not having taken care of the adequate signalling of the obstacle constituted by the hole in which [the biker] fell," while the latter was deemed responsible for "having set up dangerous markings for motorcycles."
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However, it took many more years for the court to determine what represented appropriate sex-related compensation. Alusign's insurer, Allianz, initially offered €3,000, while the Walloon Government proposed €10,000.
The woman, by contrast, demanded €25,000. Eventually, the 75th Chamber of the French-speaking Court of First Instance in Brussels determined that she should be awarded €12,500.
This money, when added to other punitive damages such as medical expenses and vehicular damage – as well as compensatory interest accumulated since the accident – totals approximately a quarter of a million euros.
