Fundación para la Confianza

Public statement

The bill on false reports puts children and adolescents at risk

October 2026

We, the undersigned organisations and individuals, who work to protect children and adolescents and to care for victims of child sexual abuse, reject the bill on false reports (Bill No. 18.239-36) in its current form. It is now before the Senate Constitution Committee, under “immediate discussion” urgency.

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Knowingly fabricated reports exist and cause harm, and they are already an offence in Chile (article 211 of the Criminal Code). The bill is presented as a way to provide redress to those who were falsely reported, but it goes much further: it opens proceedings against the person who reported and creates a new offence that allows reports made in good faith that could not be proven to be punished with imprisonment. In sexual violence in general, and in child sexual abuse in particular, most cases end for lack of evidence, not because it has been established that the events did not occur.

If this bill is passed as it stands, in addition to containing serious flaws in its legislative drafting, its consequences will be serious:

1. It will discourage the reporting of an offence that the vast majority of victims never report: only 9 in 100 people who suffered sexual abuse before the age of 18 reported it to the criminal justice system.
2. It will treat lack of evidence as falsehood, because it allows a request for a report of a sexual offence to be declared false even when the case was closed by a provisional closure (archivo provisional) by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
3. It will allow the person who reported to be ordered to pay without having been heard, if they do not object within fifteen days.
4. It will punish the “manifest negligence” (“manifiesta negligencia”) of the person who reports, and not only lying.
5. It will expose teachers, school heads and health professionals, whom the law obliges to report, to sanctions for fulfilling that duty.
6. It will make expert witnesses, psychologists and child protection programmes that assessed the child or adolescent liable with their own assets, and may impose a professional disqualification on them for two to five years, or for life.
7. It will re-victimise children and adolescents, who may be summoned again to a second trial on the same facts, in which they are not a party and are not heard.
8. It will erase the trail of repeat offenders who were not convicted, because it orders the records of the original case to be deleted.
9. It may reach adolescents who report, with an aggravated penalty precisely when the report concerns sexual abuse.
10. It provides for sanctioning administrative reports and/or requests, for example those made at the Local Children’s Offices (Oficinas Locales de Niñez) or at the Office of the Children’s Ombudsperson (Defensoría de la Niñez), if they cannot be proven.

The Supreme Court objected to the procedure and asked for it to be made compatible with the legal duty to report. The Minister of Justice proposed improving article 211 instead of creating a new procedure and a new offence. The Women and Gender Equity Committee (Comisión de la Mujer) rejected the general approval of the bill.

We ask the Senate to reject the bill in its current form. If it decides to legislate, we ask, at a minimum, that it:

1. Sanction only reports made with knowledge of their falsehood.
2. Exclude criminal cases closed by provisional closure, by the discretion not to open an investigation, or by a decision not to proceed.
3. Remove the stage that allows a person to be ordered to pay without a hearing.
4. Exclude those who report under a legal duty, and children and adolescents.
5. Limit the liability of court-appointed experts and child protection programmes to cases where wilful misconduct is proven, and guarantee their right to be heard.
6. Prohibit the child or adolescent from being required to testify again, and replace the erasure of records with a confidential annotation.
7. Commission an assessment of the impact on the rights of the child or adolescent, as required by the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We also ask that the Constitution Committee hear the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Público), the Office of the Children’s Ombudsperson and the organisations that care for child and adolescent victims before voting.

Signatures endorse the statement as it was written.

Signatories

Organisations

• Fundación para la Confianza

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Fundación para la Confianza · Bill on false reports · October 2026