Crime and no punishment

So Luis Rubiales has been found guilty of sexual assault for kissing Jenni Hermoso without her consent after Spain’s World Cup win. And his sentence? A €10,800 fine.

Now we could discuss whether the term ‘sexual assault’ is the appropriate one for what happened here - it is now called upon to cover a very broad spectrum of offences and our vocabulary probably needs to develop to keep up with our developed and developing views on what is not acceptable behaviour. 

But what I absolutely cannot accept is the message here that the price for committing something defined as a sexual assault is €10,800 (which, by the way, for a man of Rubiales’ means is probably the equivalent of £1 to an average person). This ‘crime and no punishment’ is an enormous slap in the face to Jenni Hermoso and to every woman on the planet. What this says is ‘Yes, he did assault you in a sexual way without your consent, but we don’t think that’s really very important so we won’t punish him, we’ll just give him a tiny little fine that he won’t even notice.’

It would have been way preferable to just say ‘We don’t think this is a big deal’ and to decide that he wasn’t guilty than to do this. Because sexual assault must always go side-by-side with significant consequences, and be seen to do so. Anything else sends a very dangerous message.

Jenni Hermoso has said that she felt seriously disrespected by Rubiales - which she was. And now, with this pathetic fine, the Spanish court has shown its disrespect for all women and for the seriousness of sexual assault.