Plenary session for the consideration of the reform of the 'law of only yes is yes' on March 7 in Congress.Claudio Álvarez
The parliamentary groups of ERC (13 deputies) and Bildu (six) have registered this Thursday in Congress 21 amendments for the reform of the Law of Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, known as the law of only yes is yes
,
after
the hague standard
caused in five months almost 800 reductions in sentences and more than 70 releases of sexual offenders.
Both parties assume that this is an undesired effect of the law and therefore propose reforming it by raising the penalties in certain cases, but with an alternative proposal to the one already registered by the PSOE weeks ago and which gave rise to a monumental row between the parties of the coalition government.
The deputy of United We Can Lucía Muñoz criticized the socialist proposal in these terms: "They are allied with PP and Vox so that they ask us again if we close our legs well."
Patxi López, spokesman for the PSOE in Congress, accused Podemos of "blatantly lying."
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Lucía Muñoz Dalda (Podemos): "This afternoon the PSOE lordships will applaud with the PP and Vox a reform of the law that eliminates consent from the penal code, so that they ask us again if we close our legs well" https://t. co/uYvmsIBzqz pic.twitter.com/otHU95cBun
– THE COUNTRY (@el_pais) March 7, 2023
The Socialists' proposal began its processing in Congress on March 7 with the support of the PP, Ciudadanos, PDeCAT, PNV, UPN, the Canary Islands Coalition, PRC and Foro Asturias and the rejection of Unidas Podemos, ERC, EH Bildu, the CUP and BNG.
Esquerra sources assure that the Ministry of Equality, headed by Irene Montero, from Podemos, is "up to date" with their amendments, and PSOE sources affirm that they will study them.
In Equality they limit themselves to responding: “With ERC and Bildu we have never stopped working.
They also know the proposals that we have made to the PSOE all these months”.
To accommodate the crime of sexual assault to the mildest behaviors —previously classified as abuse—, with the new law some penalties were lowered.
Both the PSOE and ERC and Bildu now propose raising them in the case of sexual assaults committed with violence or intimidation, but they do so with different formulas.
The Socialists propose creating an aggravated criminal subtype;
ERC and Bildu, modify the aggravating circumstances of the crime included in article 180 of the Penal Code.
Article 178 of the Penal Code states: "The sentencing body, provided that the circumstances of article 180 do not occur, may impose a prison sentence in its lower half or a fine of 18 to 24 months, in attention to the minor nature of the act and to the criminal circumstances of the culprit.
The new wording, according to the PSOE reform, would read as follows: "If the aggression was committed using violence or intimidation or against a victim whose will has been annulled for any reason, the person responsible will be punished with one to five years' imprisonment. prison.
The sentencing body, reasoning it in the sentence, and provided that there is no violence or intimidation or that the victim had his will annulled for any reason or the circumstances of article 180 do not concur,
Point 1 of the current article 178, which the PSOE proposal does not modify, includes the definition of consent: "Anyone who performs any act that attempts against the sexual freedom of another person without their consent.
It will only be understood that there is consent when it has been freely expressed through acts that, in view of the circumstances of the case, clearly express the will of the person.
ERC and Bildu want to add this sentence to this description of consent: "It will not be deduced that there is consent due to the absence of physical resistance or the silence of the victim, nor due to her previous sexual conduct."
In addition, ERC and Bildu propose to modify article 180 of the Penal Code, which now provides for aggravation of penalties when there is "extreme violence" -they propose to eliminate the qualifier "extreme" and add "intimidation" there.
They also claim that when referring to the condition of the aggressor, the circumstance of "close to the victim" be incorporated as an aggravating circumstance (the current Penal Code includes situations of "coexistence or kinship", specifying "ancestors or siblings", which leaves out Other family).
The PSOE text also points to intimidation or annulment of the will “for any reason” and proposes modifying the wording of the Penal Code that left out other relatives,
substituting the term "author" for that of "responsible person" to avoid "an undesired lack of application of that circumstance" aggravating.
The 2019 Macro-Survey on Violence against Women revealed that 21.6% of the aggressors were a family member and 44.2% of the women who had suffered sexual violence outside their partner stated that the aggression had taken place in a home.
The Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, refused weeks ago to reform the law without linking the increase in penalties to violence, as Podemos claimed.
“Technically it is not feasible.
Because it is necessary to say why from a penalty of four we went up to five.
Well, because there is something more serious.
The proposal made by the Ministry of Equality was to include it [violence] as an aggravating circumstance within article 180. If it is included as an aggravating circumstance in article 180, the penalty would go from two to eight years in prison instead of one to five.
That is, it is very disproportionate, ”she argued.
A magistrate consulted by EL PAÍS assures that both proposals, that of the PSOE and that of ERC and Bildu, "are legally defensible."
"The one from ERC and Bildu eliminates the 'extreme' factor incorporated into violence and broadens the definition of consent because it does not trust the judges, who have sometimes asked the victims what they did not have to ask, but at the same time it leaves them a greater margin of interpretation when it comes to imposing penalties than the reform proposed by the PSOE, which is more compartmentalized and closed”.
The jurist also highlights that ERC introduces other aggravating circumstances in its proposal to reform article 180 of the Penal Code, such as the fact that the person responsible had "prevailed from his status as a public official,
The reform that finally sees the light, in any case, will not affect the reductions and releases already agreed, but the crimes that are committed once the modification that is finally agreed in Congress enters into force.
