A/HRC/35/30/Add.3 17. Problems identified by victims and stakeholders18 in addressing domestic violence included lack of support for victims who denounced their aggressors (although many were told not to go home after submitting their report); insufficient free legal aid services; weak enforcement of protective measures under Law No. 26.485 on comprehensive protection to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women in the settings where they conduct their interpersonal relationships (hereafter the Law on violence against women); the use of standard approaches, which did not accurately evaluate the particularities of each situation; the conduct of hearings in civil courts, where both denouncers and aggressors had to appear without any protection for the alleged victims from direct encounter; the lack of specialization of some interdisciplinary teams; fragmentation between civil and criminal justice and the lack of gender expertise on the part of judges; the lack of adequate measures adapted for women in terms of age, gender identity, sexual orientation, geographic location or ethnicity; and the lack of shelters, which made it difficult for victims to leave the house of the aggressor. C. Sexual violence, including rape 18. Rape, including spousal rape, is a crime in Argentina. Under article 119 of the Criminal Code, the act of sexually abusing a person of either sex who is under 13 years of age, or when the act involves violence, threats, coercive or intimidating abuse of a relationship of dependence, authority or power, or when advantage is taken of the fact that the victim, for whatever reason, is unable to consent freely to the act, is punishable by imprisonment of six months to four years. 19 The Special Rapporteur was concerned that the article set the minimum age of consent at only 13 years and that the definition of rape was not based directly on lack of consent, but rather on use of force. She was also concerned that nationwide statistics on rape were not available and that there were no disaggregated data on rape of indigenous women and women with disabilities, or on rape and hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, or on investigations, prosecutions and convictions of perpetrators of such crimes and redress provided to victims. 19. The statute of limitation had been removed for sex crimes committed against children under 14 years of age. However, recently developed international standards in that area require States to ensure that the statute of limitation for initiating legal proceedings with regard to rape and other sexual violence allows for the initiation of proceedings after the victim has reached the age of majority (i.e., 18 years of age). 20. The Special Rapporteur received reports that the attitude of the police, hospital employees and judges towards survivors of sexual violence sometimes revictimized them. 20 D. Sexual harassment 21. The Special Rapporteur heard numerous reports that women often experienced discriminatory, aggressive and/or violent conduct, such as verbal abuse, touching and indecent assault in public spaces. Such incidents reportedly occurred every day and restricted women’s autonomy and rights, but they were generally neither recognized nor perceived as crimes and therefore were not always reported, much less punished. There were no statistics to enable the dimensions of this problem to be gauged nationally. 21 22. Sexual harassment in the workplace was a widespread phenomenon, but it was widely accepted as normal and few complaints had been made. 18 19 20 21 6 Argentina, Public Defence Office of the Nation, Acceso a la justicia para mujeres víctimas de violencia en sus relaciones interpersonales (2015). Available at www.mpd.gov.ar/pdf/publicaciones/ biblioteca/Informe%20G%C3%A9nero%202015%20con%20tapa%20e%20isbn.pdf. Argentina, Criminal Code, Law No. 11.179 of 21 December 1984, last amended 19 December 2012. United States of America, Department of State, “Argentina 2015 human rights report”. Available at www.state.gov/documents/organization/253197.pdf. In an informal online survey of the Ni Una Menos movement, 97 per cent of the women reported that they had been subjected to some form of sexual harassment over the past 12 months.