Flawed law

SPAIN’S Sexual Freedom Law, passed last August, is known as the Only Yes means Yes law.

The need for change was made clear after an 18-year-old girl was raped in 2016 by five men. Initially they were convicted of sexual abuse, receiving nine-year sentences after a video showed their victim immobile with closed eyes, giving judges the impression that she was fine with the situation.

For that reason, the new legislation has earned its Only Yes means Yes label as it replaces the old notion that in a rape situation, a woman must say No and put up a fight, possibly risking her life.

The new law promoted by Equality minister Irene Montero immediately ran into trouble because Spanish jurisprudence allows a convict to benefit retroactively from changes to legislation. Since the new law redefined sexual offences and their sentences, a number of offenders have successfully applied for reduced prison terms. Critics of Montero, rather than the law, have pointed out that it was put together hastily and rushed through too quickly.

Pedro Sanchez, president of Spain’s PSOE-Unidas Podemos coalition government, had assumed that the Supreme Court would come to the new law’s rescue. Instead the tribunal stood by the reductions, which it said were “obligatory.”

The government had already announced plans to tweak the Sexual Freedom Law, despite Montero’s rabid opposition, and as January came to an end, Sanchez made it clear that modifications would have to be made.

Aware that it cannot reverse the reduced sentences, an official statement from the Moncloa promised to “resolve the detected problems” in future rape and sexual abuse trials. No mention was made as to how this would be done, suggesting that it could prove to be less simple than it sounds.

Meanwhile, the Podemos party, to which Montero belongs, insisted that there was “still no agreement” over the solution. Does Montero, who always likes to have the last word, want it this time too?

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