The so-called Children’s Law, renamed the Rhodes Law due to the sexual abuse suffered by the British pianist based in Madrid James Rhodes, in June 2021, established the start of the calculation of the statute of limitations for a sexual crime from the moment in which The victim is 35 years old. Therefore, as can be seen from the law itself, the majority of child sexual abuse prescribes when that person is 40 or 45 years old, and only a minority of especially serious cases can prescribe when the person turns 55. What deputies of the Parliament of Catalonia and victims of pedophilia are now asking for is to modify the Penal Code and extend that period so that Spain is the 33rd country on the world list that has declared war on criminal periods for these extremely serious acts. Spain, country 33To support the initiative, they cling to two levers: social consensus and for this the defenders of the measure wield more than 57,000 signatures collected on the Change.org platform; and second, the consensus in comparative law. Currently 32 countries have modified these deadlines and have approved the total or partial imprescriptibility of criminal action. Specifically, within the European Union, eleven of the Twenty-seven have already approved the imprescriptibility of this type of crimes, at least the most serious ones. They are the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Latvia, Netherlands, Belgium, Romania, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Estonia, Denmark, Canada, in the United States in 45 states, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, South Africa, South Korea, Australia or New Zealand. Standard Related News Yes Sexual offenders of minors will have permanent control of the companies that employ them Juan Fernández-Miranda La reform of the Central Registry of Offenders that the Council of Ministers plans to approve today aims to strengthen controls. Before the parliamentary debate in the Congress of Deputies, this Tuesday, November 12, a group of victims of pedophilia have demanded in front of the Congress of Deputies a « great State agreement” to approve “urgently” the proposed law of the Catalan autonomous initiative for the imprescriptibility of criminal penalties for the crimes of pedophilia. In statements to the media, Miguel Hurtado, activist and survivor of sexual abuse in the Abbey of Montserrat , assured that “there can be no reparation for the victims, without guarantees of non-repetition.” Just yesterday, the first conviction of a monk from the abbey for sexually abusing a young man in 2019 emerged: Brother Gabriel was sentenced to two years in prison after accepting the facts. The prison sentence was for five years. The religious is disqualified by a ruling from the Provincial Court of Barcelona for work that involves contact with minors and will be on supervised release for five years. “PSOE and PP have to come to an agreement, as they did with the ALS Law or the reform of the Constitution to protect the rights of people with disabilities, to approve this law. Their voters demand it. Protecting children from sexual violence has to be an aspiration that unites all citizens, regardless of our political color,” Hurtado stated at the doors of the Congress. In addition, he has demanded that Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s team vote in favor and not remain abstained. Hurtado considers that the imprescriptibility of pedophile crimes “will not only protect future generations,” but will also mean “a moral reparation.” » for adult survivors, although they cannot benefit from the law directly, because it cannot be retroactive. The victims recalled that in February 2024 the Parliament of Catalonia approved by a large majority (PSC, Comunes, ERC, Junts, Ciutadans) a proposed law of autonomous initiative so that crimes of pedophilia do not prescribe. The proposal establishes that the most serious crimes of child sexual abuse (punished with a maximum prison sentence of 5 or more years) do not prescribe and that the rest of these crimes do so when the victim turns 50. «The proposal is much more ambitious than the current law, in force since 2021, which establishes that the majority of cases of pedophilia expire when the victim reaches the age of 40 or 45, although in a minority of very serious cases the victim can report until they are 55 years old. Deputies from these four parties of the Parliament will defend in Madrid the taking into consideration of the bill of the Parliament of Catalonia so that sexual crimes committed by adults against minors do not prescribe. The initiative is jointly promoted by the PSC-Units, ERC, Junts and the Comuns and proposes to modify the Penal Code so that crimes against sexual freedom committed by adults against minors do not prescribe when they are considered serious. As for less serious crimes of this type, the text proposes that they prescribe later so that the victim can report the facts at least until he is 50 years old. Late detection As can be seen from the explanatory memorandum of the NLP registered in Congress, consider it “precise” to equate the Spanish legislation with the legislation of the states of northern Europe. In this sense, they point out that sexual crimes against minors “constitute a serious violation of human rights and an important public health problem.” Thus, they add that the law aims to “avoid spaces of impunity, since it has been statistically proven that victims assimilate the crime slowly in the psychological field, and therefore it is often late detection.” One of each fiveThe Council of Europe estimated that 20% of children, one in five, suffered sexual abuse in their childhood. According to the Minisetriko of the IOnterior in Spain, in 2021, half of the complaints for crimes against sexual freedom had a minor as the victim and of those, only 4% are reported. The NGO Save the Children also drew attention to the fact that of this small number of complaints, many were filed when the crime had expired and only 30% ended in a sentence. MORE INFORMATION news No Detected in Spain a new lineage of echovirus 11 not associated with an increase in cases of serious illness in neonates news No A ring with four initials of his family helped identify one of the victims Another study by the NGO Educo and the Pontifical University of Comillas in 2018 added that sexual violence against minors in the Spanish State costs about 979 million euros per year.
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