Plenary session to consider the reform of the law “Only yes is yes” on March 7th in Congress.Claudio Álvarez
The ERC (13 MPs) and Bildu (six) parliamentary groups tabled 21 amendments to reform the Comprehensive Sexual Freedom Guarantee Act, known as the Law of the Just Yes Is Yes, in Congress this Thursday, under the Ordinance bringing nearly 800 sentence reductions in five months and more than 70 sex offender firings. Both parties understand that this is an undesirable effect of the law and therefore propose to reform it by increasing penalties in certain cases, but with an alternative proposal to the one already registered weeks ago by the PSOE and which led to a violent dispute between the PSOE parties of the governing coalition. United We Can MP Lucía Muñoz criticized the socialist proposal: “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 the “blatant lie”.
📺 LIVE TV | Lucía Muñoz Dalda (Podemos): “This afternoon the PSOE rulers, with the PP and Vox, will welcome a legislative reform that removes consent from the penal code, so 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 was passed in Congress on March 7 with the support of the PP, Ciudadanos, PDeCAT, PNV, UPN, the Coalition of Canary Islands, PRC and Foro Asturias and the rejection of Unidas Podemos, ERC, EH Bildu and the CUP works and BNG. Esquerra sources assure that the Equality Ministry, led by Podemos’ Irene Montero, is “up to date” with their changes and PSOE sources assure they will study them. In Equality they limit themselves to answering: “We never stopped working with ERC and Bildu. You also know the proposals that we have been making to the PSOE over the past few months.”
To narrow the crime of sexual assault down to the mildest of behaviors – previously classified as abuse – some penalties were reduced with the new law. Both the PSOE, ERC and Bildu are now proposing to raise them in the case of sexual assaults committed with violence or intimidation, but they do so with different formulas. The Social Democrats propose creating an aggravated criminal subtype; ERC and Bildu, change the aggravating circumstances of the crime in Article 180 of the Criminal Code.
Section 178 of the Criminal Code reads: “If the circumstances of Section 180 do not occur, the enforcement authority may impose a prison sentence of less than half or a fine of 18 to 24 months with reference to the fact that the offense was a minor and the criminal circumstances of the perpetrator. The new wording, according to the PSOE reform, would read as follows: “If the aggression was committed with the use of force or intimidation, or against a victim whose will has been voided for any reason, the person responsible will be sentenced to between one and five years in prison fined. Jail. Jail. The Judgment Body may impose the lower half of imprisonment or a fine of eighteen to twenty-four months, stating the reason for the judgment and provided there is no violence or intimidation, or the victim’s will has been nullified for any reason, or the circumstances of section 180 do not agree taking into account the insignificance of the crime and the perpetrator’s personal circumstances”.
Point 1 of the current Article 178, which the PSOE proposal does not change, provides the definition of consent: “Anyone who, without their consent, performs an act contrary to the sexual freedom of another person. Consent is presumed only when freely expressed through acts which, given 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: “Neither the lack of physical resistance or the silence of the victim nor the previous sexual behavior is indicative of consent.”
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In addition, the ERC and Bildu propose amending Article 180 of the Criminal Code, which now provides for increased penalties when there is “extreme violence” – they propose removing the qualifier “extreme” and adding “intimidation” there. They also require that when referring to the attacker’s condition, the fact of “victim’s proximity” be included as an aggravating factor (current Penal Code covers situations of “cohabitation or kinship”, specifying “ancestors or siblings”). omits Other Family). The PSOE text also points to intimidation or rescission of the will “for any reason” and proposes amending the Criminal Code wording that excludes other dependents by replacing the term “offender” with the term “responsible person”, to avoid “an undesirable person” lack of application of this circumstance” aggravating. The 2019 Violence Against Women Macro-Survey found that 21.6% of the aggressors were a family member and 44.2% of women who had suffered sexual violence outside their partner reported that the aggression had taken place in a home.
Justice Minister Pilar Llop refused weeks ago to reform the law without linking the increase in penalties to violence, Podemos claimed. “Technically it’s not feasible. Because it is necessary to say why we went from a penalty of four to five. Well, because there is something more serious. The Ministry for Equality’s proposal was to include them [la violencia] as an aggravating circumstance in Article 180. If included as an aggravating circumstance in Article 180, the penalty would be from two to eight years imprisonment instead of one to five years. That means it’s very disproportionate,” he argued.
A judge consulted by EL PAÍS assures that both proposals, that of the PSOE and that of the ERC and Bildu, are “legally justifiable”. “The ERC/Bildu approach eliminates the ‘extreme’ factor built into violence and broadens the definition of consent because it doesn’t trust the judges, who sometimes asked the victims what they didn’t need to ask but at the same time didn’t give them more room for interpretation when imposing penalties than the reform proposed by the PSOE, which is more delimited and cohesive”. The lawyer also points out that ERC introduces other aggravating circumstances in its proposal to reform Article 180 of the Criminal Code, such as the fact that the person responsible for carrying out the crime is “preferred from his status as a civil servant, public employee or representative of a public body ‘ or who had recorded the attack ‘through technical devices’.
In any case, the reform that will finally see the light of day will not concern the cuts and layoffs already agreed, but the crimes that will be committed once the change finally passed in Congress takes effect.