The Supreme Court (TS) has ruled that giving a kiss without express or tacit consent is a crime against sexual freedom, since “the fleeting contact of a non-consensual kiss represents a bodily invasion of the author on the victim.”
It has been established by confirming the sentence that the Provincial Court of Seville imposed on a police officer, for kissing a detainee without consent in the cells, to one year and nine months in prison as responsible for a crime of sexual abuse (now considered sexual assault, after the entry into force of the ‘only yes means yes’ law) with the aggravating circumstance of prevalence and the mitigating circumstance of drunkenness.
In the Supreme Court ruling, the magistrates declare it proven that there was physical contact of sexual content, after having tried to gain the trust of the complainant and seek some intimacy. The condemned man, they explain, came to kiss her cheek and tried to kiss her lips, although he did not succeed.
“The kiss and the attempt at another kiss constitute an interference in the sexual freedom of a person who was in a hostile environment due to being unknown, with the intention or purpose of obtaining sexual satisfaction through another,” they indicate.
For the high court, therefore, “it cannot be understood that there is a right for any person to approach another person and kiss them when the victim does not accept it as proof of affection or love due to their personal, family, or other circumstances”, since it represents “a personal attack on their privacy and sexual freedom to consent or not to who can approach them to perform an act as intimate and personal as giving them a kiss”.
The Criminal Chamber, with Judge Vicente Magro as speaker, points out that there is no room for non-consensual bodily contact under any pretext if there is no consent.
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