Boaventura de Souza Santos wants to be indicted and is filing a lawsuit to gain access to the charges

Investigator Boaventura de Sousa Santos announced this Friday that he had filed a lawsuit against the management of the Coimbra Social Research Center and asked the Ministry of Justice to name the defendant in the investigation launched following the independent commission’s report.

In an interview with Lusa, the sociologist explained that the lawsuit against the management of the Center for Social Research (CES) of Coimbra was filed about a month ago in order to gain access to documents and evidence that could allegedly exist against you.

“The possibility of forced access to documents is currently being considered. This is not a condemnation of the leadership of the Emergency Situations Commission, but rather forcing the leadership to provide access to documents of applicants who have violated their anonymity,” he clarified.

Three CES researchers reported harassment situations in a book chapter titled “Sexual Harassment in the Academy – For an Ethics of Care at the University,” which resulted in researchers Boaventura de Souza Santos and Bruno Sena Martins being suspended from all positions they held at CES in April 2023.

Within months, CES created an independent commission to investigate the allegations, releasing its report nearly a year later, on March 13, that confirmed patterns of abuse of power and harassment by people in hierarchically superior positions without naming names.

According to the report, which was then submitted to an independent commission, 32 complainants reported 14 people, for a total of 78 complaints.

A week later, a group of 13 women, in a jointly signed document, called on the Portuguese judiciary to urgently investigate the alleged criminal conduct mentioned in the report.

“If the justification for not providing statements was that the complaints were anonymous and anonymity had to be respected, these complainants did not respect anonymity because they gave their name and therefore there is no longer anonymity. At least in these cases, the statements should be available,” said Boaventura de Sousa Santos.

According to the professor, the organization’s honorary director, access to these statements is necessary in order to know what you are accused of and thus be able to defend yourself.

“On this day of our interview [quinta-feira]I ask the prosecutor to make him a defendant for investigation. I do this because I am calm, I am innocent and I know that I can demonstrate my innocence.”

Only by becoming a defendant, he argued, could he gain access to the alleged charges against him.

“Otherwise I have no access to them. I was forced to ask to be made an accused, and I do it with all my courage,” he added.

Boaventura de Souza Santos also informed Lusa that he would initiate actions to protect his identity against all those who had jeopardized his fundamental right to a good name.

“My good name and reputation were attacked, as was my health: they were called into question in a way that was almost irreversible. I was lynched in the town square: it was, you could say, a character assassination,” he lamented.

According to the sociologist, the target of these actions will be all people who contributed to their name being “called into question without evidence, without documents and without justification.”

“This has never been done anywhere in the world for so long and with impunity, in a public square. And this without an internal disciplinary process in the institution. [CES]” he claimed.

Boaventura took the opportunity to refer to a case of harassment that occurred at another university institution and was made public at the same time, but the identities of those involved were not revealed.

“Internal committees were created and it was decided. It was not something that was decided in my Centre: it allowed my reputation, which is not only national but also international, to be questioned and deeply affected during this time,” he concluded.