A decree writes sexual assault into Haitian criminal law

A decree dated 6 July 2005 amended the Haitian criminal code and inserted a section headed Agressions Sexuelles. Rape and other sexual assaults, whether carried out or attempted, became punishable by sentences running from ten years to life, with the penalty raised where the victim was a child, where the attacker was a relative, or where several men acted together. The term sexual assault entered Haitian criminal law for the first time. These acts were defined as crimes against a person and set apart from indecent assault. The same law took adultery out of the criminal code, which cancelled provisions that had applied to wives and not to husbands, and it abolished the extenuating circumstance a husband could plead after killing his wife on finding her with another man. Adeline Magloire Chancy held the post of Minister for the Status of Women in the two year transitional government that carried this through, ten years after the ministry was created. That same year the state approved a national plan against violence towards women.