According to a note published on the Brazilian Presidency’s website, the legal amendment was published today, International Women’s Day, in an extra edition of the Official Journal of the Union.
Brazil has eliminated the possibility for sexual abusers of children up to age 14 and other vulnerable individuals to invoke mitigating factors to avoid punishment, according to a decree published and sanctioned by the President of the Republic on Sunday.
this change in our Criminal Code, there are no longer any loopholes for relativizations, nor any chances for abusers to try to evade penalties by claiming, for example, that the relationships were consensual or that they did not result in pregnancy,” Lula da Silva argued in a post on the social network X.
On March 8th, I sanctioned a bill that ensures in our legislation the absolute presumption of vulnerability for children under 14 years old who are victims of rape.
The project, authored by Deputy Laura Carneiro, ensures a clear and unambiguous legal wording for…pic.twitter.com/CdrOe13wRr
According to a note published on the Brazilian Presidency’s website, the legal change was published today, International Women’s Day, in an extra edition of the Official Journal of the Union.
The decree defines as vulnerable, within the context of the crime of sexual abuse of vulnerable individuals, those under 14 years of age and people who, due to illness, mental disability, or other cause “do not have the capacity to discern or cannot offer resistance,” determining that the penalties provided by law “apply independently of the victim’s consent, their sexual experience, whether they had previous sexual relations, or the occurrence of pregnancy resulting from the crime.”
“In the twenty-first century, we can no longer accept this kind of violence against our girls. And this change is a step forward in the evolution of Brazilian laws,” stated the Brazilian head of state at the X event.
The law resulted from a project by Deputy Laura Carneiro and takes effect this Sunday.
