It is a legal decision in Switzerland which nevertheless arouses particular emotion. On Wednesday, November 22, the country’s federal court validated a decision by the Court of Appeal which ruled that the duration of a rape could lead to a reduction in the sentence of a defendant convicted a few years earlier. A look back at the affair which is making headlines in France.
It all started years ago, in February 2020, when a 33-year-old woman was raped by two men during a party in the Swiss city of Basel, Swiss media report. The two suspects are aged 17 and 33. They will be judged a few months later. The oldest will be sentenced to four years and three months in prison and banned from entering Swiss territory for eight years. The youngest is still in the trial process.
A question consistent with federal law
In 2021, first controversy. Seized, the Court of Appeal reduces the sentence of the convicted person to three years in prison, of which eighteen months are suspended, and two years of inadmissibility. She motivates this decision orally by believing that the victim “played with fire” and “gave bad signals” to her attackers. In addition, the judge adds that the rape lasted eleven minutes, an argument sufficient to reduce the length of the sentence. “More than 500 people” then gathered in the street to protest in August of the same year, according to RTS.
The Swiss Federal Court is in turn asked to examine this reduction in sentence, and especially the arguments put forward. If the fact of pointing out the victim’s attitude is rejected and the court’s judgment overturned, the duration of the act is retained as a valid justification in accordance with Swiss law. “As part of the examination of guilt, we can ask the question of the duration of the act. This is happening, explains to RTS the lawyer specializing in criminal law, Charlotte Iselin. For example, if a kidnapping is committed, the fault is of course not the same whether the kidnapping lasted two days or three weeks. »
However, “in the context of rape, an act is committed. We can also even wonder if eleven minutes is a duration that is really short,” she also underlines. “A rape, regardless of its duration, is extremely serious,” adds her colleague Clara Schneuwly, interviewed by the Belgian media.