Mexican State Reverses Law Easing Rape Penalties

Bowing to pressure from outraged women’s groups, a Mexican state legislature on Tuesday scrapped a recently approved law aimed at shortening prison sentences for rapists judged to have been provoked by their victims.

Lawmakers in Chihuahua state dropped a clause of the state penal code they approved in August that cut the minimum rape sentence from four years to one year if the offender could prove that the victim provoked the attack.

The legislators backed down in a unanimous vote after a nationwide campaign by a coalition that emerged after a series of slayings in the border city of Ciudad Juarez in which the victims were also raped.

The women’s groups took their fight to Mexico’s national Congress, which threatened to intervene if the state legislature refused to revamp the penal code.

Chihuahua lawmakers had said the provocation clause was designed to prevent women from falsely accusing boyfriends of rape in order to avoid telling their parents that they are having sex--something that federal legislators had said is a common occurrence.