Consent has always been at the heart of crimes against sexual freedom, the Supreme Court warned in a new sentence

The main reason Podemos accused of rejecting the socialist proposal for reform only the law of yes is yes Will this text, by increasing the punishment for sexual assaults carried out with violence or intimidation, hit the “heart” of the norm, which according to those responsible for the equality ministry, covers any sexual act carried out without consent? To punish is one of the parts. Lawyers have debated in recent weeks whether the importance of consent is really at the heart of the sexual freedom law, and most agree that although the new rule introduces a legal definition of consent for the first time, it was already the determining factor. whether or not there was no offense before the law Only yes is yes. This is also considered by the Supreme Court, which consolidated this interpretation in a single sentence notified yesterday.

“It is difficult to question regulation before Reforms driven by LO 10/2022 Any nonconsensual sexual contact deserves the same punishment,” says a sentence, for which Magistrate Javier Hernandez has been a cadence, and in which the Criminal Chamber sentenced a man to eight years and four months for sexually abusing a daughter and a son. sentenced to jail. , the latter under the age of 16. The reporter in his writing cited another judgment from January 20, in which the Supreme Court had already ruled in the same direction. “The absence of consent which permits the title embracing these offenses was always essential, as they are offenses against sexual liberty, which are based on the absence of consent to an action with inherently sexual content” , indicates that other proposal, for which Julián Sánchez Melgar was a rapport.

In that sentence, magistrates reviewed the changes introduced in only the law of yes is yes Regarding the figure of consent, and after recalling that this is the first time that the definition of this concept has been introduced in the law, he explains that the formula now used is “an open formula, and it has been used before”. was taken into account, in similar terms, to understand concurrent consent, from the point of view of jurisprudence. “Historically, our criminal law did not have a legal definition of consent that was linked to a description of criminal types, which is not to say that jurisprudence has not always understood that it is, in this type of negative case, a It was sufficient, as an element, that the agent acted without the consent of the person sexually assaulted, or under a consent erroneous from the circumstances, the court states.