A strict rule against sexual assault was implemented in Spain

[ad_1]

The term “the law of just yes is yes” is used in Spain to refer to the legislation Congress enacted making consent the deciding factor in sexual crime prosecutions.

This week, the Spanish State’s Official Gazette published the Organic Law of Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, which states that: “Consent will only be understood when it has been freely expressed, through acts that, in light of the circumstances of the case, clearly express the will of the person “.

As a result, persons who have experienced any kind of sexual assault won’t need to provide evidence that they were assaulted or that they resisted.

According to the new rule, any sexual conduct that does not involve permission will be regarded as sexual assault. The Penal Code no longer includes the idea of abuse.

reactions

Irene Montero, the Minister of Equality and the primary speaker for the law that originated as a defense against charges, hailed the legislative adoption of the measure as “finally, our country recognizes by law that consent is what has to be at the core of all our sexual connections.” The 2016 Sanfermines gang rape of a 21-year-old girl was just as contentious as the La Manada incident.

The five companions who had sexually assaulted the youngster were given a preliminary sentence of nine years in jail in 2018. However, bail continued to be used to release the members of La Manada.

A private assessment commissioned by the accused’s defense that raised doubts about the young woman’s ability to resume “a normal life” after the aggression that she herself had reported cast doubt on the victim’s testimony a year earlier.

The sentence was then appealed to the Supreme Court by the government of Navarra, whose court had sentenced La Manada.

The Supreme Court condemned the five members of La Manada to 15 years in prison for rape following public hearings, pro-victim protests, and the viral film “Sister, I do believe you,” in which dozens of voices backed the young woman’s claims. They were detained without delay. The Court further determined that receiving humiliating treatment and acting in concert with others were aggravating factors.

historic assertion

She tells Clarion Argentine historian Josefina Martnez, a member and representative for Pan y Rosas in Spain, that “the law incorporates several claims and demands that had been planted from the feminist movement several years ago in the face of the perception of the increase in sexist violence and femicides.”

In this view, Martnez explains, “it is taken into consideration the questioning that the feminist movement has made multiple times to judges in cases where violence has not been substantiated and, thus, they did not believe that there had been a violation.” This was the situation in the so-called La Manada gang rape. The initial legal ruling said that the incident qualified as abuse even though there had been no physical assaults, failing to account for the fact that the woman was under pressure from five males while in shock.

“No woman is going to have to prove that there was violence or intimidation in an assault for it to be considered as such, as a sexual assault,” Minister Montero said.

“Since the State offers a comprehensive care and restitution schedule for all women who are sexual violence victims, we view all sexual violence as sexist aggression against women. The feminist cries of “Only yes it is yes,” “Sister, I do believe you,” and other such phrases became the law in our nation “Added he.

The PSOE and United We Can pledge in the 2019 government coalition agreement that “We will modify criminal legislation to ensure that the victim’s consent is key in sexual offenses, so that, if a woman does not say yes, everything else is no. That is to say, they hypothesized, she just says yes.

online violence

The punishment for “digital violence” is contemplated: sentences of between three months and one year in prison for those who spread intimate photos or videos of another person or use those images to open false profiles on any platform. This is just one of the changes the new law makes to the Penal Code.

“Those who address another person with expressions, behaviors, or propositions of a sexual nature that produce an objectively humiliating, unpleasant, or intimidating environment for the victim, without constituting other offenses of a greater type” will also be considered sexual violence and penalized. severity”, according to the law’s language.

Beginning the next year, crisis centers in all of Spain’s regions will provide victims of sexual assault with specialist assistance. These centers will be open 24 hours a day.

The law, according to historian Martnez, “has a paradox, a contradiction” because it “tries to solve a profound problem, like gender violence, with a solution that, as some feminists say, is ‘punitivist,'” i.e., by increasing or changing the penalties under the Penal Code, as if that could solve a problem that is much deeper.

Even if there are tougher sanctions, gender-based violence still exists, and Martnez claims that this exposes women to numerous vulnerable situations that are not taken into account by the law.

According to the expert, “this is the case of undocumented migrant women who are exposed to instances of gender violence and who are not going to be able to find a way out through the legal system because they risk being ejected from the country.”

The historian rules out the possibility that this law, which is based on permission and from which it won’t be necessary to show violence in case of complaint, might lead to an increase in fictitious complaints.

“The Popular Party (PP) or Vox law was challenged by sectors, who made the claim that there had been a flood of fraudulent complaints. However, research has shown that the number of bogus complaints is extremely small. If a woman has not experienced sexual assault, she is not required to go through a police station or a police and judicial interrogation “she claims.

The expert says, “I do think it is a problem that women have to establish before judges if they have been raped or not.