Is Sexual Harassment A Crime
Whoever sexually harasses another person shall be punished by a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months. This is also the basic form of this crime. The legislator prescribes a more severely qualified form that additionally protects the minor victims of this act. Thus, it is prescribed that whoever does this act against a minor is punished by imprisonment for a term between three months and three years.
The legislator defines this crime so that sexual harassment is any verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct that aims or violates the dignity of a person in the sexual sphere, which causes fear or creates a hostile, degrading or abusive environment. Passi & Patel Brampton is the right criminal lawyer for you.
The perpetrator of this act may be any person, regardless of gender, and the same applies to the victim. So, by the definition of the crime it is possible that the perpetrator is a man and the victim is a woman or vice versa, but also that the perpetrator and the victim are of the same sex. It is possible for the perpetrator to be one of the spouses and the other spouse the victim, boyfriend, girlfriend, extra-marital partners, etc.
An act of execution is any verbal, non-verbal or physical behavior, that is, any behavior of the perpetrator which must be such as to aim or be an offense to the dignity of a person in the sphere of sexual life. This means that any act aimed at violating the dignity of the victim in the sex sphere is the act of committing this criminal offense, whether there was a violation of the dignity of the victim in the sphere of sexual life or that such violation did not occur, but that the act of execution was undertaken in order to that kind of hurt comes.
Although the opposite view can be defended that the violation of dignity in the sphere of sexual life is in fact the consequence of this crime, we believe that it is not, but rather that it is a qualified form of the act of execution, which in addition to the basic elements must include an additional one: violation of sexual morality or attempt his injuries.
The question now is what is dignity in the sphere of sex life or more precisely sexual morality and who is empowered to evaluate it. We cannot accept any attempt to define this term on the basis of objective criteria, because every man knows and feels what his dignity is in the sphere of sex life. What will be a violation of sexual morality for some will be acceptable behavior for others?
So, sexual morality must be defined subjectively and judged on a case-by-case basis, depending on the personal characteristics and moral values of the victim of this crime. Precisely because the dignity of a person in the sphere of sexual life must be defined on the basis of subjective criteria, it will be very difficult to determine in practice whether the conduct is such as to aim or constitute a violation of that dignity.
