No one wants to talk about why the Paris CCTV sexual harasser hasn't been arrested

There is still a relatively relaxed, laissez-faire attitude towards these kinds of crimes in France. Abuse – alleged or otherwise – by white alpha males is certainly all part of the culture

Beyond the recorded moment of impact, the most distressing aspect of the high-profile criminal case involving a woman being assaulted outside a Paris cafe is that her assailant remains at large.

Despite clear CCTV footage, police appeals and numerous onlookers watching the incident unfold in broad daylight, the man who slapped Marie Laguerre square in the face was allowed to calmly walk away, as if he had just finished a coffee.

At one point, four witnesses stood in front of the thug, talking to him, but there was no attempt at apprehending him before police arrived. As well as seeing the violence, all are likely to have heard Marie being wolf-whistled at and subjected to degrading sexual language before she swore at the unidentified white, bearded man. One of those intervening pathetically brandished a chair, suggesting he might possibly get round to using it as a weapon against the attacker, but in fact there was no heroic vigilantism whatsoever.

This illustrates a profound difference between France and the UK, where instant images and a media-focused population tend to ensure suspects are caught within a few hours at most. France is still obsessed by privacy, and people are often reluctant to respond to appeals on TV, radio or online.

More than that, my betting is that in many parts of Britain, anyone treating a woman with that kind of ferocity in full public view would have been flattened, and held down until beat officers appeared.

Just as worryingly, there is still a relatively relaxed, laissez-faire attitude towards these kinds of crimes in France. Abuse – alleged or otherwise – by white alpha males is certainly all part of French establishment culture.

Astonishingly, there are currently two cabinet politicians who were recently accused of extremely serious sex offences. Gerald Darmanin, the budget minister and self-styled insistent flirt, kept his job while under police investigation for rape. The case was dismissed when the complainant stopped cooperating with police, but not before Darmanin admitted taking her to a swingers’ club and then to a five-star hotel for sex.

All the time, he was technically advising the woman “professionally” about clearing her name in a legal dispute. A second enquiry has now been opened against Darmanin for “abuse of weakness” after a woman claimed he asked her for sexual favours in return for help with her housing problems.

Nicolas Hulot, the ecology minister, was meanwhile accused by the granddaughter of the late French president Francois Mitterrand of forcing her to sleep with him at a time when he was at least 20 years her senior. He denied that it was rape, or that she was then under the age of consent, before the case was dropped because it was outside the statute of limitations. The former TV presenter is also said to have harassed and bedded a second woman against her will, while she was working for his private foundation.

Both men insisted they were innocent, and have threatened libel proceedings against their accusers, but the lack of fuss, let alone outrage about the cases has been shocking. Senior colleagues saw no reason to even suspend them from their posts while the allegations were investigated.

The last three presidents of France before Emmanuel Macron had serious controversies associated with their personal lives too, treating women close to them with abject disdain.

Socialist Francois Hollande infamously evicted his official “first lady” from the Elysee Palace after being caught out with a TV actress in a nearby love nest. Nicolas Sarkozy devoted most of his miserable single term in office pursuing the supermodel Carla Bruni, while dumping his second wife and at least one journalist lover. Jacques Chirac, another philandering conservative, was notorious for his affairs, but – as with his later criminal conviction for corruption – they did not do his public reputation any harm at all.

For a country that has never had a woman head of state, it is all profoundly dispiriting, especially when household name film stars like Catherine Deneuve actively rubbish those campaigning for an end to such abuse. Earlier this year, the actress joined others in denouncing the #MeToo campaign that grew out of the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal. As alleged victims exposed their attackers, Deneuve and her supporters accused them of, inter alia, subjecting men to a “witch-hunt”, suggesting that unwanted attention or worse are all part of exotic Gallic culture.

Meanwhile, any type of crimes by dark-skinned men from poor backgrounds are regularly used by increasingly reactionary politicians – and not just those of the far-right National Rally party – to demonise immigrants, and indeed the communities they come from. Much lower standards are expected from prosperous Caucasians who have all the power and influence.

The assault on Marie Laguerre comes as the Macron administration introduces extremely tokenistic legislation aimed at getting men to behave themselves. Sexual harassment, including such vague indiscretions as “long stares”, and indeed wolf-whistling, will be punished by new on-the-spot fines starting at €90 (£80). When I asked a government spokesman how exactly such measures were to be enforced, he admitted that it would be “with difficulty”.

The truth is that women like Marie will continue to be viewed as easy targets unless there is a radical cultural change. As she put it: “The problem is the systematic insecurity that women suffer as a result of men. Some men think that the street belongs to them and that we have no business being there.”

Marie certainly believes that the new law “is almost a joke”, adding: “I don’t think it’s realistic because it means having police officers on every street and officers also need to be educated to recognise harassing behaviour." In fact, chillingly inappropriate behaviour extends as far as the highest offices of state, and an effective solution must address this fact.