The Madrid Prosecutor’s Office has shelved the investigation into sexist chants in a Madrid hall of residence that led the Prime Minister himself, Pedro Sánchez, to condemn those made by sexists. The State Attorney General’s Office promoted opening some proceedings to which was added a complaint by the president of the Movement against Intolerance, which has now been filed as no elements were found for a hate crime.
The complaint reported that on the night of October 2, 2022, a group of young residents of the ElÃas Ahuja Residence Hall led songs to the residents of the neighboring Santa Mónica Residence Hall. In the opinion of the complainants, the facts could constitute a hate crime. The investigation includes a video that went viral in which residents of this residence hall, attached to the Complutense University of Madrid, intimidated their neighbors by yelling at them like “nymphomaniacs”, “whores” and “we are going to fuck you” or “Come out of your burrows, rabbits.”
The archive decree maintains that the facts are “disrespectful and insulting to women” and the expressions used constitute “an attack on their individual or collective dignity.”
However, they cannot by themselves constitute a hate crime, as this crime requires the concurrence of a specific discriminatory motivation, which has not been proven in the investigation for previous, contemporary or subsequent events to those denounced.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the investigated action cannot be classified as a crime against moral integrity either because for this it is necessary that one of the recipients of the expressions had felt offended and “there is no record that none of the women who were in the residence has denounced the factsâ€.
The complaint stated that the events had had “a very broad media and social repercussion, generating an incidence that enables the development of a macho and misogynist language and subculture, which damages the dignity of all women.” In addition to understanding that it was a “synchronized, organized action that is projected, even with references to previous years.”
However, after an investigation, the public ministry explains that criminal prosecution cannot be pursued. In the archive decree, the Prosecutor’s Office also affirms that the facts cannot be included in a crime of the new article 173.4 of the Penal Code included in the law of yes is yes, in which those who launch expressions, behaviors or propositions of of a sexual nature that create an objectively humiliating, hostile or intimidating situation for the victim, without constituting other more serious crimes. The reason is that the facts are prior to the entry into force of the law promoted by the Ministry of Equality.
The facts have had a response outside the criminal sphere, as the ElÃas Ahuja Residence Hall has taken immediate measures.
