German parliament redefines rape in new law.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/sexualstrafrecht-alles-was-sie-zu-nein-heisst-nein-wissen-muessen-a-1101658.html
(article in german)
- Passed Lower Chamber of parliament with 100% approval. Upper Chamber will vote on it on September 23rd.
- In the old law, it was only rape if violence or the threat of violence was involved. In the new law, it's rape if it goes "against the recognizable will of the victim". That's how the law got the nickname "No means No".
- A further crime gets defined: If somebody gets sexually abused by a group, each and every member of that group committed a crime, whether they actually did something or not. Being a member of that group is a crime in and on itself.
(The Green Party originally attacked this as unconstitutional but still voted for the final version of the law.)
- The law for the expulsion of immigrants gets modified: Being sentenced under this new rape-law is a modifier that drastically lowers some legal obstacles for kicking an immigrant out of the country.
- Even though it gets denied officially, there is an obvious connection to the sexual assaults and rapes in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2015/2016.
(Further speculation links the law to a controversial recent case where a german model claims she was raped at a party.)