The National Council Committee recommends the approval solution to the grand chamber by 15 to 10 votes. An assault, sexual coercion or rape is committed by anyone who performs a sexual act with a person “without their consent”. Therefore, “Only a yes is a yes” should apply.
The majority of the Committee hopes that in the investigation of sexual offenses the prosecuting authorities will increasingly focus on the behavior of the suspected perpetrator and not on the behavior of the suspected victim.
For the Commission’s minority, on the other hand, “symbolic criminal law” threatens to reverse the burden of proof. In the criminal process, this can lead to too high expectations among the victims of sexual offences.
In the summer session of 2022, the Council of States decided by 25 to 18 votes in favor of the denial or objection solution, according to which anyone who carries out such actions “against the will” of a person can be prosecuted. So “No means no” should apply. In the general vote, the small chamber then passed the bill with no votes against.
The draft also partly redefines the criminal framework in sex criminal law. For example, the Council of States wants rapists to go to prison in the future. The minimum sentence must therefore be at least two years in prison, so that an offender cannot get away with a suspended prison sentence.
The provisional advisory National Council Commission, on the other hand, proposes a minimum prison sentence of one year and thus does not want to rule out parole. The Commission also wants to increase the statute of limitations for sexual offenses against children. These may not become time-barred in the future if they are committed on children under the age of 16. Today that age limit is 12 years.
Like the Council of States, the National Council Committee also recommends making so-called revenge pornography a new criminal offence. This involves the unauthorized forwarding of non-public sexual content. However, the Committee recommends that this article be broader than the Council of States and also include other compromising recordings.
In contrast to the Council of States, the preliminary advisory committee of the National Council would also like to include the crime of “cybergrooming” in the law. The term describes the targeted entering into sexual contact with minors, or planning sexual abuse. The Commission writes that digital harassment of children and young people on the internet is a major problem. Therefore, it should be included in the law as an application offense.
With the revision, the Federal Council aims to adapt sexual criminal law to the social developments of recent years. He wants violent and sexual offenses, which are often committed against women and children, to be punished more severely in the future. The proposal also aims to better harmonize the cohesion between the range of punishments in criminal law.
(SDA)