Spain’s left-wing government announced Monday that it is considering amending its law on sexual violence against women, to close legal loopholes that allowed sentence reductions or release of some aggressors.
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The controversy erupted in November, six weeks after the so-called “only yes is yes” law came into force, to consider all sexual activity without explicit consent as aggression, in response to the notorious case of the group rape of “La Pack” to a young woman in 2016.
“We are working technically (to) make some adjustments to this rule, which is a law that we are proud of, but that effectively It has some effects that we did not want and that we are going to try to avoid with these adjustments,” the government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, told public radio RNE.
We will do whatever it takes to (…) protect feminist advances and achievements
The new law hardened the legal arsenal against violations, eliminating “abuses”, milder, and integrating all sexual crimes in the category of “aggressions”.
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But the regulations reduced the minimum and maximum sentences in some cases, which led many convicts to request a review of the sentence, since in Spain the new laws can be applied retroactively if they benefit the prisoner.
Since then, about 20 convicts were released and another 300 received reductions in their sentences, according to Spanish media.
Rodríguez’s statements confirmed press reports about the desire of the government of the socialist Pedro Sánchez to make the modifications, which triggered tension with the minority partner in the coalition in power, the extreme left of Podemos, which championed the law.
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The main opposition formation, the Popular Party (PP, right), inflamed the controversy by offering the Socialists parliamentary support to modify the law without having to count on Podemos.
But Irene Montero, Podemos’s equality minister, rejected any possibility of backing down, vowing to do “everything necessary” to ensure that
Consent remains at the core of the regulation.
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“We are going to protect the heart of the ‘law of only yes is yes'” and leave “consent at the center,” Montero launched Sunday at an event for his party.
“We will do whatever is necessary to (…) protect feminist advances and achievements against those, like the Popular Party, who want to take advantage of this situation to push us back after the greatest advance that the feminist struggle has achieved in the fight against sexist violence in the last 20 years,” Montero said.
Until the law came into force, rape victims had to prove that they had been subjected to violence or intimidation, since without these conditions the crime was considered abuse and not sexual assault, with lighter penalties.
AFP
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