Legislators of Truth
“Sister, I do believe you” is a slogan of the feminist movement that became popular in Spain in response to the case known as La Manada, in which five men gang-raped an 18-year-old woman. Argentine senator Carolina Losada, author of the bill that increases penalties for false accusations, appeared to allude to this phrase during the Security and Justice plenary session on June 4, 2025, when she said, "We need to put an end to the paradigm that if you are a woman, I believe you just because you are a woman. I believe you if you are a woman and you tell the truth."
Bill S-0228/2025, authored by Carolina Losada and co-signed by five other senators, introduces amendments to the criminal offenses of false accusation and perjury under the National Criminal Code. On the one hand, it provides for harsher penalties; on the other, it increases the severity of conduct in cases involving accusations of gender-based violence, crimes against minors, or crimes against sexual integrity.
The bill’s rationale frames the alleged need to introduce these amendments in the criminal system by referring to the dissemination of accusations in he press and on social media, which in many cases result in public shaming. It also claims that filing a false accusation of sexual abuse imposes a very heavy burden for the accused, who, in addition to proving that he did not commit the alleged act, faces risks, such as “in many cases losing contact with their children, jeopardizing their employment, and suffering a range of serious social stigmas.”
While false accusations do present various problems, the bill is flawed in its legislative approach and legal technique, exaggerates the magnitude of the problem, and—if passed—could negatively affect the exercise of freedom of expression and access to justice for victims of gender-based violence, as their right to speak out would be subjected to a "truth test" that, as a general rule, does not apply to the debate of matters of public interest.
Differences between Slander and False Accusation: Some (Im)precisions by the Authors
Regarding slander and false accusation, some observations emerge from the structure of the Criminal Code. While the offense of slander is found in the section on "crimes against honor," false accusation is classified in the section "crimes against public administration." This means that they protect different legal interests. Likewise, they are fundamentally distinct types of conduct.
For slander to be established the subjects of the offense must be specific or identifiable individuals, the conduct attributed must be defined as an offense in the Criminal Code or in other criminal laws, and the attribution must be particularized. The imputation of the offense through slander must give rise to public prosecution; the statements must be false; the person accused of committing the offense must not, in fact, have committed it; and the author of the statements must have knowledge of their falsity. In contrast, false accusation is committed at the time the complaint is filed and undermines the administration of justice by activating the jurisdiction while knowingly reporting a non-existent fact.
These differences are essential to clarify some of the confusion promoted by the senators in the drafting of the explanatory memorandum and during the debate. In the memorandum, they state that the problem presented leads them to "request the addition of a paragraph to Article 117 bis of the National Criminal Code, whereby the dissemination of false information and insults in the context of gender-based violence, sexual abuse or harassment, or violence against children and adolescents would carry harsher penalties." Article 117 bis, to which they refer, prescribes penalties for the offenses of insult and slander; however, the bill contains no proposal related to that article and instead focuses on modifications to the criminal offense of false accusation.
This lack of precision in the text and in the legislative technique employed reveals that slander and false accusation are two distinct criminal offenses. The bill addresses only the latter; therefore, the intention to regulate the dissemination of false information on social media and in the press has little to do with what the bill actually seeks to accomplish.
Gender Violence and Freedom of Expression
The bill considers that false accusations are aggravated when disseminated on social media and links this problem to "public shaming." In doing so, it inevitably brings in a dimension of freedom of expression and opts for restrictive measures on this right that must be justified under general principles. In this regard, the initiative is conceptually flawed in failing to recognize that reports of gender-based violence constitute matters of significant public interest and are therefore speech that enjoys special protection in a democratic political community.
Public shaming (escrache), on the other hand, is a particular form of collective action that emerged in Argentina within the framework of the human rights movement during the era of the “Due Obedience” and “Full Stop” laws [Obediencia Debida and Punto Final]. Understood as an informal public denunciation, it first appeared with the organization H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence), which around 1996 carried out acts of public exposure targeting members of the armed forces who had participated in the dictatorship and benefited from impunity laws and pardons. Later on, the feminist movement adopted escrache as a practice that, just as at its inception, responds to the shortcomings of judicial systems in addressing certain phenomena. Not every false accusation constitutes an escrache in these terms, nor should every act of informal public denunciation necessarily be equated with a false accusation.
In this sense, there is an essential dimension of freedom of expression in the public reporting of cases of gender-based violence. In the Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and Gender Justice, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and Access to Information of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) stated that “women who publicly denounce alleged perpetrators of sexual or gender-based violence should not be subject to criminal defamation charges, prosecuted for false reporting of crimes, or targeted with frivolous or vexatious defamation lawsuits.”
On the contrary, statements made by women consisting of reports of sexual and gender-based violence are, according to the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR),forms of expression that receive special protection under the right to freedom of expression. Consequently,“States must ensure that such expression enjoys special protection, since restricting it may hinder the eradication of violence against women. States must decriminalize all defamation and insult offenses, and enact comprehensive legislation to discourage vexatious or frivolous defamation cases and strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) aimed at intimidating and silencing women and excluding them from public life.”
In the countries of the region, few have developed specific jurisprudential lines that address the tensions this practice entails. Among them is Colombia, whose Constitutional Court has studied escrache, weighing freedom of expression on the one side and potential rights that could be impaired, such as honor, reputation, and the presumption of innocence, on the other. Indeed, the Colombian Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence on escrache has been based on the concept of institutional violence already recognized and developed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which refers to situations in which the state becomes a second aggressor against women who turn to institutions to report acts of violence. That is why, in the first ruling in this line, the Court described escrache as a “safety valve.”For the Court, in such cases, freedom of expression promotes "peaceful confrontations against state or social decisions that discriminate against women (...) It is an exercise in defense against any attack that, from their perspective, they consider harmful to their integrity or dignity. Likewise, this right acquires greater value in societies with high rates of gender-based violence and, specifically, violence against women. Its purpose is to express disagreement with state, social, and personal sexist practices, which may be expressed in all forms, including on social media."
Public reports, whether individual or collective, about violence against women are a valid and protected exercise of freedom of expression, enjoying reinforced constitutional protection. They also play an important role, as they inform and raise awareness in society about a matter of general interest. In addition, they facilitate the strengthening of support networks among victims, which contributes to both the prevention and investigation of acts of discrimination and violence. They also help identify patterns of violence, such as repeated offenders or areas that pose a particular danger to women.
From Escrache to False Accusation: Intimidating Complainants
The bill contains errors of legislative technique that are evident in the explanatory memorandum and range from the apparent confusion of the criminal offense of false accusation and the conduct of slander (already mentioned), to the assertion that in a criminal proceeding, the burden of proof lies with the defendant.
But the problem with the proposal is not limited to the above. The narrative behind the proposed amendment reflects stereotypes that are not new and are not supported by verifiable evidence. According to UN Women (2024), “false allegations make up less than 1% globally. In Spain, they represent only 0,0084% of gender-based violence cases. In Argentina, while there are no official statistics, available studies show that less than 3% of all criminal complaints would be false, mostly for economic crimes.”
In fact, according to members ofELA who searched for jurisprudence on the Supreme Court of Justice's website, "cases involving false accusations are usually linked primarily to economic, forgery, and customs-related crimes—fraud, insurance scams, smuggling— the proportion of women charged is very low, and none were for reports of gender-based violence."The notion that women tend to file complaints in order to cause harm or seek revenge is unfounded and creates barriers for victims of gender-based violence to be made visible, to access justice and to obtain reparations, in a context in which, according to theViolence Prevalence Survey,“45% of Argentine women have suffered violence at some point in their lives at the hands of their current or former partner, but only one in four has sought help or filed a report.”
There is no clear, precise, or proportionate justification for incorporating gender-based violence as a distinct category for harsher penalties. On the contrary, increasing penalties by applying special criteria to these cases introduces gender-discriminatory standards and intimidates victims of gender-based violence who turn to the judicial system, creating situations of inhibition and revictimization. The same is true for crimes against sexual integrity and crimes against children.
Crimes that constitute gender-based violence, including sexual violence, are complex in terms of evidence, a problem that intensifies when they are interpreted as events that occur within the private sphere. This raises concerns about the criminal offense of false accusation, which could seriously impact women who turn to the judicial system to report such crimes. They already face barriers in the investigation and prosecution of the conduct they denounce, and could now be punished for reporting acts that are not easy to prove given the burdens of the system. This difficulty in proving evidence means that it is harder to overcome the presumption of innocence. For this reason, the acquittal of the accused in criminal proceedings does not necessarily imply that the accusation was "false" or amounted to slander.
Creating obstacles to access justice disregards the duty of the Argentine State to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate and punish violence against women, as recognized in the Belém do Pará Convention, adopted through Law No. 24.632. Such obstacles would disproportionately affect women who have historically been subjected to violence and discrimination on the basis of gender.
