In their first session of the year, senators unanimously passed a bill that looks to aims to erase from the Criminal Code an article that allows a victim of rape to forgive his/her sexual aggressor.
According to the current law, a rapist could be forgiven by his victim through marriage. To qualify for this, the victim must be at least 16 years old and has to prove that they were both involved in a relationship before the rape.
The Senate decided to unify all eight draft bills aiming at eliminating this paragraph from the Criminal Code, which dissident Peronist senator Sonia Escudero considered to be “a passport to impunity.”
During the debate, several senators brought up Carla Figueroa’s case to prove their point.
Figueroa was a teenager who after being raped by her boyfriend, Marcelo Tomaselli, asked a judge for his release and married him only to be murdered by him eight days later.
Kirchnerite senator Miguel Angel Pichetto also chose to criticize the legal system.
“A man killed his wife and his two children and he’s still free. Argentina is great. I wonder whatever happened to that judge,” he said.
Senators also unanimously ratified the declaration signed in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego by a committee formed by deputies and senators claiming sovereignty over the Malvinas, Sandwich, and South Georgia islands in hands of the United Kingdom at the South Atlantic.
The document also rejects the “constant colonialist and militarist attitude of the United Kingdom”, and emphasizes that the “UK doesn’t recognize the UN resolutions signed in order to find a peaceful, just, and ever lasting solution to the conflict.”
The Upper House also approved the creation of a mixed committee integrated by lawmakers, intellectuals and professors that will have the responsibility of taking Argentina’s sovereignty claim to the main international forums.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald