With the slogan “Clothes are not consent!”, the Panevėžys police invites you to celebrate the International Jeans Day for the prevention of sexual violence.
April 24 the world is celebrating International Jeans Day, when community and organization workers are invited to wear jeans to show support for victims of sexual violence.
The history of the International Jeans Day Against Sexual Violence began in 1992. In Italy, when a 45-year-old driving instructor raped an 18-year-old girl who came to her first driving lesson.
She reported the rape, the driving instructor was prosecuted. The court sentenced him to prison.
However, the instructor appealed the court’s verdict, claiming that the girl agreed to have sex with him.
The Italian Supreme Court overturned the conviction, and the court’s ruling stated that because the victim was wearing very tight jeans, the instructor would not have been able to remove them by himself without her help. Throughout Italy, this decision became known as the “jeans alibi”.
Enraged by such a verdict, Italian parliamentarians gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court wearing jeans.
Women’s message that there can never be any excuse for sexual violence has spread around the world, so the International Jeans Day for the Prevention of Sexual Violence began to be celebrated on the last Wednesday of April.
