Parliament rejects bills to make sexual harassment a crime and tougher penalties

Two bills that would amend the Criminal Code to increase penalties for sexual harassment and make sexual harassment a crime were defeated this Friday in Parliament.

The deputies discussed a number of initiatives aimed at creating measures to support victims of moral and sexual harassment, among which two bills, one from the Left Bloc (LB) and the other from Chega, which proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, stood out.

“The crime of harassment does not exist in the Penal Code, and that is what we propose: for it to exist,” said BE MP Joana Mortagua, defending the creation of the crime of sexual harassment and qualified sexual harassment.

In 2015, legislation began to provide for “sexual harassment,” but according to the Blockade MP, “harassment is not only what is included in sexual harassment.”

The bill only counted in the vote for BE and was defeated in the vote against PS, PSD, and PCP, with Chege and the Liberal Initiative (IL) abstaining.

Among other criticisms, the PS, PCP and IL rejected the proposal, arguing that harassment is already punishable under the Criminal Code with other legal crimes.

Chega leader Andre Ventura considered the BE proposal “overkill”. “The criminalization of piropos will be a platitude and a joke for those who see us from the outside,” he said.

Joana Mortagua responded to the criticism by recalling that “it is not the law that creates the crimes, but the crimes that create the law”: “We can wait for reality to change, or we can change the penal code,” he said.

The MP from Bloco de Esquerda also recalled that “the penal code of Portugal is more conservative than the penal code of Spain and France.”

Chega’s bill provided that a crime would be punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment, with one-third aggravating circumstances, if it occurred “at work, school or university.”

The initiative failed as PS, PSD, IL, PCP and BE voted against and were heavily criticized given the “very dangerous prospect” of the degree, according to Socialist MP Claudia Santos.

Claudia Santos warned that the proposal was “discriminatory” when comparing people born in Portugal and “men from migrant communities”.

Chegi’s deputy Rita Mathias maintained her bench position, saying it was enough to drive with “TDVE drivers” to understand what was at stake.

Chega’s sexual harassment bill states that “as an aggravating factor, Portugal today is a country whose immigration policy is based on complete deregulation and lack of control, with an exponential increase in the number of communities from countries whose civilizational cultures are completely incompatible with the Western style in which the role of women is reduced to a level that, perhaps, was not even among the antipodes of our civilization.

Claudia Santos also questioned the purpose of another sentence in Chega’s proposal, which states that “a woman should have the freedom to enjoy her femininity, just as a man has the freedom to appreciate her.”

“Do not count on the fact that we will return the criminal law to the service of any morality, dominant or not,” the socialist deputy concluded.

Only two draft resolutions from BE and IL, which advocate for the establishment of anti-harassment mechanisms in higher education institutions (HEIs), were approved and the committee closed.

For Joana Mortagua, “leaving the fight against harassment to the autonomy of universities means leaving everything the same,” which is why the Esquerda Block needs codes of conduct and a channel of condemnation outside of the schools themselves.

Joana Mortagua recalled that “whenever there is a scandal in academia, there is general outrage (…), but there are few complaints and even fewer condemnations.”

IL recommended that the government develop strategies to deal with situations of moral and sexual harassment in the higher education system.

Carla Castro of Illinois recalled that while the focus is on universities, “these behaviors are seen throughout society.”