The version of Article 336 of the Criminal Code on the definition of rape, as proposed and put out for public consultation for some days (only in Greek), has been a particularly unpleasant surprise for the Diotima Centre:

Not only the draft of the new Criminal Code does not adopt a definition based on the absence of consent, which is a chronic demand of feminist movements and humanitarian organizations worldwide, but the already anachronistic and problematic definition of rape, which until now required the use of physical violence or the threat of serious and immediate danger, is being replaced, for the worse, by another definition that still refers to the use of physical violence and even limits the threat only to the legal value of the victim’s life or physical integrity!

The proposed definition seems to completely ignore the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention), which has entered into force in our country, as Article 36 of the Convention refers to the voluntary consent of individuals to any sexual act or behaviour, which should be product of free will.

Any adoption of the proposed definition, therefore, is contrary to the obligation of our country to take all necessary measures regarding the criminalization of any sexual act performed non-consensually by both participants in it.

The definition of rape as proposed not only violates the serious commitments we have made as a State, but is socially unacceptable and full of stereotypes (of the ‘dragon’ perpetrator, the ‘ideal’ victim), against which the feminist movement around the world has been fighting for many years.

If it prevails, it will continue to keep in obscurity a huge percentage of rapes where the use of physical violence cannot be proven, where the rape was not committed by the use of violence, where the victim is known to the perpetrator, or even worse, where there is an intimate relationship between victim and perpetrator.

We hope that this incomprehensible choice, which has no justificatory basis, will be reversed, and that the Minister of Justice will understand the urgent need to amend article 336 of the Criminal Code on the basis of the absence of consent, so that this heinous crime of imposition and power is finally made visible and punished as it deserves.