Attorney Pavel Uhl filed a complaint with the European Court in mid-October. According to the representative of the victims, Adéla Hořejší, the argumentation is based on the same points applied before the Constitutional Court.
“The state refused to prosecute the sexual assault as rape, although it admitted that the intercourse was not voluntary. He justified this by the fact that our clients did not express their resistance to sexual intercourse in a sufficiently qualified manner and that the intensity of the suspect’s violence was not sufficient. At the same time, he relied on stereotypes built on myths about the perfect victim and the perpetrator,” she explained to Hořejší iRozhlasu the reason why her clients decided to file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.
In June, the Constitutional Court ruled on the complaint of five women who were originally identified as possible victims of sexual violence in Feri’s case. The police postponed their cases and in the end Feri went to court only because of three other acts. Four women were unsuccessful in their complaint to the Constitutional Court.
“The Constitutional Court emphasized that, from the point of view of protecting the rights of victims, it is not possible for law enforcement authorities to interpret the conditions of criminal responsibility for serious violations of human rights in an excessively narrow way in favor of the alleged perpetrators,” the decision reads.
Because of this, the lawyers of the victims believe that the state has violated the European Convention on Human Rights. If the women’s complaints were upheld by the Strasbourg court, they would have the possibility of compensation and, in theory, a new judicial opening of the whole matter.
She was the only one who succeeded
On the contrary, the Constitutional Court accepted the woman who had a brief relationship with Feri when she was 17 years old. Her case concerns sexual intercourse, during which Feri was supposed to remove the condom without her consent and, despite her reservations, complete the intercourse. According to the verdict, the police and the prosecutor’s office must return to the case.
“The court did not find any reasonable reason why expressing consent to a certain sexual activity should exclude the criminal liability of the offender who forces the victim to a substantially different sexual activity. Whether the goal of using a condom is to prevent pregnancy or to protect oneself from sexually transmitted diseases, its use is part of the sexual autonomy of the individual and the protection of the quality of his life in areas protected by the constitutional order,” said judge Jan Svatoň.
