Chega submitted a bill to prevent the suspension of sentences for crimes of rape or sexual abuse of minors, considering that “the system allows the release of people who have committed serious crimes.”
The diploma delivered to the Assembly of the Republic reforms the Penal Code to enshrine in law that the possibility of suspension of the execution of prison sentences for crimes of rape and sexual abuse of minors.
In the initiative, Chega argues that, “as it stands, the system allows the release of people who have committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens, among whom are the most defenseless.”
“Most of our fellow citizens look at the courts with a critical eye because they do not understand that a crime such as the sexual abuse of minors, socially repugnant and with a marked degree of seriousness, can see the execution of the prison sentence suspended”, Consider the deputies of the far-right party.
And they criticize that “Portugal has the most lenient regime” among the “countries of the Council of Europe”.
In the bill, Chega presents several examples of convictions for crimes of rape or sexual abuse of minors, “all with a common characteristic, the suspension of the execution of the sentence applied, which never exceeded the five-year limit provided for in the Article 50 of the Penal Code”.
And it points out that “in 2007, through initiatives of the PS and PSD government, the Assembly of the Republic extended from three to five years the sentences that may have suspended sentences, including in this extension crimes such as attempted homicide, domestic violence, rape, human trafficking, kidnapping with torture, child sexual abuse, pimping with minors under 14 years of age or robbery with armed violence, among others”, with the argument of “the need for resocialization, combined with a certain excess of sentences to effective sentences by judges, with subsequent serving of sentences in already overcrowded prisons.”
Chega’s deputies maintain that, due to this “political option, the judge, in many cases, is obliged to suspend the execution of the prison sentence imposedeven when they are in situations of domestic violence or other serious crimes, namely, the crime of sexual abuse of minors.”
In a statement, the party says that one of the issues for which “the most has been fought” is the “fight against the crimes of rape and sexual abuse of minors and to toughen the penalties for this type of crime” and stresses that ” children must be protected from all those who develop pedophile tendencies, and one of the most effective ways to achieve this is to distance these types of people as much as possible, and for as long as possible, from the youngest.
Source: Observadora
