Parliament debates proposals to combat sexual abuse of minors on Thursday

The Assembly of the Republic will discuss and vote on Thursday on several initiatives to combat sexual abuse of minors, a debate scheduled by Chegoy after prominent cases involving the Catholic Church.

The party, led by André Ventura, celebrated this pot-test debate with the theme “Combating sexual abuse of minors in Portugal”, which will last more than two hours, and introduced three bills and two draft resolutions on this issue. The Liberal Initiative and the Left Bloc also submitted bills in this area, which will be discussed on Thursday, according to the agenda of the Parliament.

Chega is proposing amendments to the criminal code, including a ban on suspended prison sentences for crimes of child sexual abuse, pimping minors and pornography of minors.

In the explanatory note of the project, the deputies argue that “the majority of fellow citizens are critical of the courts, because they do not understand that such a crime as sexual abuse of children, socially disgusting and of high severity, can be suspended the execution of a prison sentence,” stating, that “in its current form, the system allows the release of people who have committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens.”

In another bill, also in order to amend the Criminal Code, Chega proposes to increase the statute of limitations to 15 years for crimes “against the freedom and sexual self-determination of minors, as well as crimes related to female genital mutilation when the victim is a minor.”

The party also wants these crimes not to expire before the victim turns 30, and the law currently stipulates that criminal proceedings end at 23.

BE also proposes in its bill that crimes should not be imposed until the victim reaches the age of 30, while the Liberal Initiative wants to increase the sentence to 40 years.

In their bill, the blockers support the recommendations of the Catholic Church’s Independent Commission on Child Sexual Abuse and argue that “allowing victims to grow, mature, break free from the chains also created by unequal power relations with their aggressors, and freely decide whether to condemn the crimes they have committed, is not only an imperative of fairness that better protects their rights, but can also have a positive effect in terms of overall prevention.”

IL also indicates that it wants to comply with the commission’s recommendations on this issue, and justifies this by saying that “reality shows that male victims of this type of childhood abuse only report the crime and seek help, as a rule, after 20 years after abuse, finding that most men are in their 30s and 40s, when they finally feel they have the conditions to do so.”

In the third bill, the Chega parliamentary group also proposes a general increase in the penalties applicable to crimes related to child sexual abuse.

Chega also wants to recommend to the government, through draft resolutions, the implementation of a national plan to combat paedophilia, the conduct of a national study “which examines the topic of sexual abuse of minors in various special and social contexts” and that a national campaign be launched to combat sexual abuse of minors. aimed at civil society, which promotes their “literacy in prevention, detection and emotional management in situations of violence”.

It is also proposed to create an information channel and a nationwide victimization survey “to collect specific data on the number of complaints, the number of lawsuits filed, completed and pending.”