Department of Criminal Law, Philosophy of Law and History of Law, University of Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain.
Department of Psychology and Sociology, Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, University of Zaragoza, 44003 Teruel, Spain.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Oct 5;18(19):10460. doi: 10.3390/ijerph181910460.
Child and adolescent sexual abuse (CSA) is an international public health problem. Despite the importance of CSA, there is no consensus definition, and the lack of consensus is related to difficulties in conducting prevalence studies as well as research in other areas. To establish a consensual definition, legal aspects such as the age of sexual consent and the difference in age or power between victim and aggressor as well as aspects related to sexual freedom and sexual indemnity must be considered. Therefore, the main goal of this research was to analyze the age of sexual consent in the legal systems of Spanish-speaking countries and to examine whether the Romeo and Juliet clause is established. To achieve the proposed aims, we employed the legal interpretation method, and we analyzed the current Criminal Codes of the 21 Spanish-speaking countries. From the results, it is found that the age of sexual consent varies between countries, establishing valid sexual consent between 13 and 18 years. In addition, only six countries have the Romeo and Juliet clause that protects sexual freedom in adolescents. Finally, we discussed the lack of consensus on the age of sexual consent and the limitations presented by the Romeo and Juliet clause.
儿童和青少年性虐待（CSA）是一个国际公共卫生问题。尽管 CSA 很重要，但目前尚无共识定义，缺乏共识与进行患病率研究以及其他领域研究的困难有关。为了建立一个共识定义，必须考虑到法律方面，例如性同意的年龄以及受害者和攻击者之间的年龄或权力差异，以及与性自由和性赔偿有关的方面。因此，这项研究的主要目的是分析西班牙语国家法律体系中的性同意年龄，并研究是否确立了罗密欧与朱丽叶条款。为了实现既定目标，我们采用了法律解释方法，并分析了 21 个西班牙语国家的现行刑法典。结果发现，性同意的年龄因国家而异，在 13 至 18 岁之间确立了有效的性同意。此外，只有六个国家有罗密欧与朱丽叶条款，该条款保护青少年的性自由。最后，我们讨论了对性同意年龄缺乏共识以及罗密欧与朱丽叶条款所带来的限制。
