Integridad Moral y Delitos

• The topic discusses torture and other crimes against moral integrity under Spanish law.

Moral Integrity: Concept

• Article 15 of the Spanish Constitution explicitly protects the right to moral integrity.
• This right ensures the inviolability of a person, protecting them against attacks that harm the body or spirit, and any intervention without consent.
• Inhuman or degrading treatment that could violate a person's moral integrity is prohibited.
• According to the Supreme Court, moral integrity is intrinsic to a person's dignity, recognizing them as a moral subject able to make responsible decisions about their behavior.
• The constitutional guarantee of dignity prevents the instrumental use of a person or the imposition of burdens not legally sanctioned.
• Judgments (STS) define moral integrity as the right to be treated as a person, not an object.
• Article 177 of the Criminal Code states that a relevant attack on moral integrity does not preclude punishment for other offenses, such as harm to life, physical integrity, health, sexual freedom, or property.

Crime Against Moral Integrity (Art. 173.1 CP)

• Article 173.1 of the Criminal Code outlines the basic offense against moral integrity.
• It punishes anyone who inflicts degrading treatment on another person, severely undermining their moral integrity, with a prison sentence of six months to two years.
• The provision covers a wide range of conduct capable of harming the legally protected right, provided the method is considered "degrading" and the harm to moral integrity is severe.
• This clause acts as a catch-all for significant violations of moral integrity.

Interpretation of Degrading Treatment

• The Supreme Court defines degrading treatment as actions that cause suffering, humiliation, or debasement, treating the victim instrumentally and without dignity.
• The behavior should be demeaning or humiliating, considering the individual's dignity.

Examples of Actions Constituting a Crime Against Moral Integrity

• Forcing someone to kneel for a long time, bathe in cold water, and cutting their hair as punishment.
• Beating a victim, forcing them to undress, eat excrement, and drink dog urine, causing vomiting.
• Severe cases of bullying in schools.

Examples of Actions NOT Constituting a Crime Against Moral Integrity

• Shaving the mustache of an elderly man with incontinence as punishment for wetting the bed.
• Pulling a minor's backpack, pushing them against a wall, and spitting on them while saying they will pay for what they did.
• Scolding students with expressions like "useless," "sack of bones," or "worthless."

Additional Provision (2022 Reform)

• Since the 2022 reform, withholding information about the location of a deceased person's body from their family is punishable under Article 173.1 CP.

Minor Grievances

• Minor grievances that do not significantly affect moral integrity are only punishable if the victim is a spouse, similar relation, or family member.
• No such relationship is required if the victim is subjected to sexually suggestive expressions, behaviors, or propositions that create a humiliating, hostile, or intimidating environment.

Aggravating Factors

• If an attack on moral integrity results from a sexual assault, only the latter offense is considered with its corresponding aggravating factors.
• In some cases, harm to moral integrity can constitute a separate offense, such as reminding a sexual assault victim of past attacks, increasing humiliation, or forcing someone to witness the sexual assault of their partner.
• The offense of moral integrity is not absorbed by a corresponding offense against freedom when someone is subjected to degrading conditions during kidnapping.

Workplace and Housing Harassment (Mobbing)

• Article 173.1 CP includes additional paragraphs addressing workplace and housing harassment to extend the scope of the offense against moral integrity.
• The law applies to cases involving repeated humiliating or hostile acts, even if they do not amount to degrading treatment.

Workplace Harassment

• It punishes those who, within a work or employment setting and abusing a position of authority, repeatedly perform hostile or humiliating acts that constitute serious harassment against the victim.
• Repeat hostile or humiliating acts may be criminal if they create a situation of "harassment," resulting from psychological hostility that humiliates the person and imposes a serious offense to their dignity.
• Behavior must constitute degrading treatment and involve a systematic and prolonged climate of hostility and humiliation by someone in a superior position.
• The law seeks to punish the creation of unease in the victim by means of psychological harassment or intimidation.
• Episodes that are isolated and reflect an act of arbitrariness are not covered in this rule.

Subordination

• Only acts where there is a relationship of subordination between the victim and the harasser can lead to punishment.
• Supervisors are only responsible if they are aware of the bullying committed by their subordinates, and there is no response.

Delimitation of Workplace Harassment

• The main interpretative problem involves the delimitation of true harassment.
• The law requires more than mere situations of workplace stress to be considered workplace harrassment.

Housing Harassment

• Code punishes subjects in a workplace that, aiming to impede the legitimate enjoyment of housing, perform recurring acts that are hostile or humiliating.

Domestic Violence (Art. 173.2 and 3 CP)

• Gender violence, domestic violence, and violence within the family unit were previously concealed but are now openly condemned.
• The scale and impact of this violence spurred reforms, from measures for comprehensive protection against violence, to those protecting children and adolescents.
• Key procedural tools include protection orders for victims, integrating civil and criminal precautionary measures, such as removal of the aggressor from the family home or prohibitions on approaching the victim.

Substantive Criminal Law

• Systematic increases in sentences are applied when a crime is committed in this context, with the aggravating circumstance of "gender reasons" or material in injuries.
• Penalties and measures are used in dissuading violence, or execution with respect to these needs.
• The penalties are reinforced in the case of imprisonment with measures for cases where a threat has been made.

Offense of Habitual Violence (Art. 173.2.1 CP)

• A person who habitually exerts physical or psychological violence against a current or former spouse, or related through an analogous relationship of affectivity, including descendants, ascendants, or siblings, is subject to penalties.
• The law applies to violence exerted against minors or disabled individuals needing special protection, or anyone integrated into the family environment, even those in custody or care in public or private centers.
• The penalty is considered more severe if the actions entail domestic violence or any other analogical situation.
• This offense represents the non-aggravation of a common delinquency.
• The exercise of physical or psychological violence is typecast.

Protected Individuals

• The article does not protect the health, freedom, or safety of victims, rather their physical integrity.
• It includes the legal possibility of judging multiple people under this concept.
• The law also protects a specific interpersonal and relational framework.

Criminal and Violence Acts

• Homicides, injuries, or aggressions that may occur are considered criminal acts.
• If one undertakes violent acts, those actions will be expressed by 177 CP and will compete independently with the crime of habitual violence.
• An individual may face the consequences for violent habits, assault, damage, etc.

Concept of Typical Conduct

• Typical contact consists of habitually realized acts of physical or psychological violence.
• While they do not restrict the causation of psychological injuries, they also consider pictures where they are subject insults, threats, or similarities, where these characteristics amount to physical violence due to their intrinsic gravity or temporal prolongation.

Requirement of Habituality

• Habituality refers to the existence of a permanent climate of violence, not just the number of aggressions.
• The generation of violent outbreaks simply acts as an indication of the properly typical of the behavior.
• This typical conduct is imposed upon a state of hostility and humiliation.

Factors in Habituality

• To appreciate habituality, the state tends to a number of acts of violence.
• There is a tendency that such violence is either performed upon the same victim is different victims of the article.
• There is consideration whether or not the violent acts have been the object of the trials in previous processes through their humiliation.

Protected Group of People

• The group is comprised of persons, regardless of their personal connection with the aggressor, that are integrated into the core family environment.
• The protection extends to those that, while no more spouse or people linked to the author through an analogous relationship of emotion, do not exists convivence.
• The protection is extended also to descendants, ascendants, and siblings, both themselves as a couple.
• The law protects people through a familiar bond or violence towards familial violence after a separation.

Torture (Arts. 174-177 CP)

• Torture is explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, as well as in international human rights conventions.
• Spanish law defines torture as follows: an authority or public official who, abusing their position and for the purpose of obtaining a confession or information from any person or punishing them for any act they have committed or suspected of having committed, subjects them to conditions or procedures that, per their nature, duration, or other circumstances, cause physical or mental suffering, suppression or diminishing of faculties of knowledge, discernment, or decision, or otherwise violate their moral integrity.
• The guilty party is only said public official.
• Torture requires a subjective element where the active party acts as a source of information and/or as a punishment for a victim that is being discriminated against.

Types of Torture

• The subject who acts abuse must also be in the exercise of the functions or take advantage of the condition provides functions.
• The typical behaviour consists of attempting by any means against the moral integrity of another person.
• The law specifies some behaviors that may have these capacities, such as causing the victim physical and mental suffering, or diminishing their faculty of knowledge.
• Jurisprudence has held that isolated blows do not necessarily constitute torture.
• There needs to be a certain duration and severity.
• It is required to submit the victim to any conditions or procedures.
• Article 176 states the code penal sees that is of a deserving person that allows the deeds for the authority.

El artículo explora la integridad moral bajo la ley española, protegiendo contra tratos inhumanos y degradantes. Se basa en el Artículo 15 de la Constitución Española y jurisprudencia del Tribunal Supremo. Define la integridad moral como el derecho a ser tratado como persona, no como objeto.