A group of politicians, academics and activists, including a contingent of U.S. professors, gathered Wednesday in the halls of the Jalisco Congress in downtown Guadalajara to fete the passage of legal reforms that make penalties for child sexual abuse and prostitution more severe. The new measures in some cases double prison time for people convicted of such crimes.
“The vote was unanimous and it happened in record time,” said Marcela Serratos, legislative assistant to Alejandro Rojas, the representative lauded Wednesday as the prime mover behind these reforms to the state’s penal code and legal procedures.
The new measures were said to make Jalisco unique among Mexican states.
“They will have an effect in other states in Mexico,” said Gloria Del Real at Wednesday’s four-hour ceremony and breakfast. She is a member of a Guadalajara-area Rotary club that supported the new measures. Rotary, an international service group founded in Chicago, has about 20 clubs in the Guadalajara area.
A number of U.S. supporters attended the event marking the tough new measures. Among them was Shari Shamsavari, a psychologist affiliated with Sonoma State University in California. Shamsavari was credited by local Rotarian Guillermo Sanchez with being “the motor behind all this.”
Shamsavari leads various efforts related to children, including one that created a orchestra among disadvantaged Guadalajara kids, one that obtained birth certificates for Mexican children who lacked them, and another aimed at children enmeshed in problems on the U.S.-Mexico border. Shamsavari has lent her support to the new legislation, which will entail use of some of her methods that involve music and art and that aim to prevent child sex abuse and rehabilitate offenders and victims.