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  • It's estimated that 1 in 20 women in the European Union has been raped.

  • That's around nine million.

  • So how a country defines and punishes this crime matters a lot.

  • Rape has a huge impact on an individual's life.

  • Today, I almost feel: 'Yes I have to still sleep with my lights on.'

  • The problem is Europe's rape laws are all over the place.

  • We need massive legal changes

  • and we need a discussion about consent.

  • Judges have upheld the decision of a lower court

  • to clear five men of gang-raping an 18-year-old woman.

  • This case sent shockwaves through Spain.

  • Then came another.

  • Five men who had sex with an unconscious 14-year-old were also cleared of rape.

  • In Spain the law says that for something to count as rape,

  • there must be violence or intimidation.

  • So really different from the UK where rape is sex without consent

  • and if somebody can't consent, so say they're unconscious, then it's still rape.

  • The world was outraged by the cases in Spain, but Spain is far from alone.

  • Of all the countries in the EU, plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland,

  • only nine treat non-consensual sex as rape,

  • in the other 22, there has to be some sort of violence or threat.

  • We all know that you can actually be raped without violence.

  • A lot of victims become so scared that they freeze.

  • In my case I was asleep when it happened,

  • and he didn't hurt me physically, so I didn't have any bruises on me at all.

  • Despite its reputation for gender equality,

  • Denmark has some of the weakest rape laws in Europe.

  • To be guilty of rape here you must have threatened violence.

  • I think I was like: 'Wait this is not happening to me.'

  • And it took me a while before I was like: 'OK this is happening to me.'

  • Emilie woke up at a friend's house to find a man she didn't know having sex with her.

  • I woke up while it was happening, yeah.

  • I just froze totally. Then I asked him to stop and pulled my clothes back on

  • and just went straight out the door.

  • But because her attacker hadn't used violence, he was cleared of rape.

  • I was in court, they were questioning me about if I said no, did I push him back?

  • 'Did you do anything to stop him?' I was like: 'Well first of all, I was asleep.

  • And then when I woke up, I was shocked, I was totally shocked.'

  • Perpetrators are not punished, victims are not receiving justice.

  • We are calling all states to change their definitions of rape,

  • in order to base them on absence of consent and not on use of force.

  • Convictions in Denmark are astonishingly low.

  • The government estimates more than 5,000 women a year

  • are victims of rape or attempted rape,

  • but in 2018 there were only 77 convictions.

  • So countries are under pressure to change their laws.

  • Greece, Iceland and Sweden have changed theirs in the last two years.

  • Here, sex without consent is now rape.

  • It used to be the woman who had to prove that she had not given consent

  • or that she was raped.

  • And today it's the perpetrator who actually has more or less

  • to explain how he got a consent.

  • So what difference has this made?

  • You have I think at least six or seven cases now in Sweden,

  • cases that would not have been considered rape before.

  • We talk a lot more about rape as a criminal act

  • and it's easier to explain today what rape actually is.

  • Now Denmark, Spain and Finland are thinking about changing their laws,

  • but that still leaves 19 countries with no plans to change, which is a problem.

  • In 2014, a new European treaty came into force, designed to protect women from violence.

  • It's called the Istanbul Convention,

  • and it says that countries must have laws that make sex without consent a crime.

  • And most countries in Europe signed up .

  • Countries who are not changing their definition in line with the Istanbul Convention

  • are breaching international law.

  • In Poland, rape is only rape if there's violence or coercion.

  • And rape within a marriage isn't a crime.

  • We still teach our girls how not to get raped,

  • instead of teaching the boys not to rape in the first place.

  • Here, rape carries one of the lightest punishments in Europe.

  • 30, 40% of men who commit rape are sentenced to two years,

  • and from this 30 or 40, 60% have their sentence suspended,

  • so they don't even go to jail.

  • I'm from Amnesty International Poland.

  • Amnesty International are concerned about Poland's laws.

  • We're doing a campaign about consent.

  • They've started visiting bars and clubs to teach young people about consent.

  • So we have some tattoos...

  • The tattoo says 'tak to miłość'.

  • It means 'yes is love' in English.

  • But it could get even harder to talk about consent here.

  • The government's proposing a new law dubbed 'the paedophile law'.

  • It makes it a crime to talk to children about sex.

  • Effectively, it bans sex education.

  • Lack of education is resulting in stigma attached to victims of rape and violence.

  • They are not knowing their rights, they are not reporting.

  • I was called a paedophile several times, I was also called a murderer.

  • I was threatened on the streets verbally and physically.

  • For teaching children about sex?

  • Yeah.

  • Across Europe women are increasingly angry with their governments

  • for failing to protect them from sexual violence.

  • Women in this country are getting a little bit weary

  • at the routine victim-blaming going on in Irish courts,

  • and the failure of lawmakers in this house to do anything about it.

  • If it happens again and we haven't changed the law, I wouldn't report it.

  • Going to court again and all the questions, it's not worth it, I think.

It's estimated that 1 in 20 women in the European Union has been raped.

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