Before the new Haitian penal code, no law expressly punished sexual harassment. Certainly, some considered that one could assimilate the fact of threatening an employee to obtain sexual favors as part of the sexual assaults provided for by the decree of July 6, 2005, but this was questionable. Moreover, the term sexual harassment strictly speaking did not exist in our legal corpus. A vagueness that greatly prejudiced the victims who often had no recourse.
However, sexual harassment is a recurring phenomenon in Haitian society. Indeed, even if there are not many statistics in this direction, an article published in Le Nouvelliste on March 23, 2015 related the data resulting from a report carried out by the Solidarity of Haitian Women (SOFA) and the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), via a report on the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace in Haiti. Out of a sample of 305 women, more than 11% of women claim to have been victims of an owner, supervisor or manager in the manufacturing sector, more than 37% of women in public administration and NGOs resort to suicide attempts and the consumption of sleeping pills to escape insults, according to the report. Thereby,
With the new penal code, there is no longer any doubt that sexual harassment is an offense. Indeed, article 307 defines harassment as being the fact of repeatedly imposing on a person remarks or behavior with a sexual connotation which undermines his dignity because of their degrading or humiliating nature or creates against him. an intimidating, hostile or offensive situation. He is liable to imprisonment for six (6) months to one (1) year and a fine of 10,000 to 25,000 gourdes or one of these penalties.
When committed by several people acting as perpetrators or accomplices, or at the threat of a weapon or an animal, sexual harassment is punishable by imprisonment from one (1) year to three (3) years and a fine of 50,000 to 75,000 gourdes. The quality of a minor under the age of eighteen (18 years) is a factor of aggravation of this offense and the penalty in this case is doubled.
Article 308 continues to establish that “the fact by a person abusing the authority conferred on him by his functions of harassing others by giving orders, uttering threats, imposing constraints or exerting serious pressure in order to obtain favors of a sexual nature, is punishable by imprisonment of six (6) months to one (1) year and a fine of 15,000 to 25,000 gourdes, or one of these penalties. If the victim is under fifteen (15) years of age, the penalty is doubled. But despite this aggravating criterion, the legislator does not change the classification of offense. The harassment so far defined remains a punishable offense before the correctional courts.
In the case of charges of sexual harassment, as well as those based on rape or other crimes and offenses of a sexual nature, the accused person will not be able to raise as a defense, which he believed the victim had consented to. fulfillment of the facts of the charge when, as the case may be, this belief arises either from the willful weakening of his faculties, or from his recklessness or willful blindness, or because he did not take reasonable measures , in the circumstances of which he was then aware, to ascertain consent. Here, the consent to the act must be formal. Read more via Le Nouvelliste