Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she has filed charges against a man who groped her on the street on Tuesday.
A video of the incident is circulating on social media in which a man approaches Sheinbaum from behind, puts his arm around her and kisses her neck. Another man, later identified by Sheinbaum as his colleague Juan José Ramírez Mendoza, intervened.
during his daily press conferenceSheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, said the man seemed intoxicated and did not realize what had happened until Ramírez Mendoza arrived.
The Mexican leader said she decided to press charges because “it is something that I have experienced as a woman, but that we also experience as women in our country.” She said she faced similar harassment while using public transportation when she was 12 years old.
Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada Said On Tuesday evening, it was reported on social platform X that the person has been arrested by the country’s Security and Civil Defense Secretariat.
“If they touch the president, they touch all of us,” Brugada said.
Mexico City police on Tuesday were able to link the man to two other incidents of harassment against Mexicans, according to CNN informed,
Sheinbaum said on Wednesday that he and his team decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to avoid traffic. Presidential General Staff, a military body that assists in protecting the President dissolved by Sheinbaum’s predecessor, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Sheinbaum also called on states to improve safeguards for women to report assaults, saying that “women’s personal spaces should not be violated.”
In 2021, 49.7 percent of women ages 15 and older in Mexico reported that they had experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives, with 34.7 percent saying they had experienced physical violence at some point, according to a report From the country’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography.
In the same year, 99.7 percent of incidents of sexual violence against women were unreported Mexico IvaluaA think tank that analyzes the country’s policies.
The Associated Press contributed.
