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Fundación para la Confianza

Policy brief

Policy brief: the false reports bill (Bill No. 18.239-36)

Policy brief by Fundación para la Confianza for the Senate Constitution, Legislation, Justice and Rules Committee (Comisión de Constitución, Legislación, Justicia y Reglamento). Bill establishing penalties for false accusations, reports or criminal complaints and regulating the procedure for their application. October 2026.

Read the executive summary

Read and sign the statement

In this brief:

Overview

Fundación para la Confianza asks the Committee not to approve the bill in its current form. We maintain that the bill discourages good-faith reporting in the area where reporting is lowest and proof is hardest, which is child sexual abuse, because it allows a falsity proceeding to be opened against a report of a sexual offence or a family case that ends without a conviction, including through a closure of the case by the Public Prosecutor’s Office; it can result in the person who reported being ordered to pay without being heard if they do not object within fifteen days; it penalises negligence as well as intent; and it increases the penalty precisely when the report concerns sexual offences.

According to research by the CUIDA UC Centre using the National Survey on Sexual Abuse and Childhood Adversity (Encuesta Nacional de Abuso Sexual y Adversidades en la Niñez), 91 in 100 people who suffered sexual abuse before the age of 18 did not report it to Carabineros (Chile’s national uniformed police), the PDI (Investigations Police of Chile) or the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Público). Of the reports that are made, most are closed for lack of evidence, whereas, when a case reaches judgment, the courts convict in more than eight out of ten cases. In other words, the system has a problem of proof, and the bill treats it as a problem of falsity.

The bill does not contain the child rights impact assessment that the Convention requires for every law affecting children, and it contradicts the protection of good-faith reporters that the Committee on the Rights of the Child considers part of article 19. It also exposes teachers, school heads and health professionals, whom the law already penalises if they fail to report, to a new penalty if they report and the case does not end in a conviction, and it makes the experts, psychologists and protection programmes that assessed the child personally liable, with their own assets and with a professional disqualification. Reports invented knowingly do exist and cause harm, and article 211 of the Criminal Code already punishes them; the Minister of Justice himself proposed before the Family Committee that that article be made more severe, and the Supreme Court objected to the summary (monitory) procedure and asked that the bill be reconciled with the legal duty to report. If the Committee decides to legislate, we propose fourteen amendments at the end of this brief.

Content of the bill

The private member’s bill (moción) introduced by Senators Kaiser, Balladares, Gatica, Ossandón and Van Rysselberghe (text as introduced, 6 May 2026) defines as false any accusation, report or criminal complaint “that is subsequently rejected” by acquittal, dismissal (sobreseimiento) or other ruling (art. 2 a). The definition includes the imputation of an infringement or offence, “whether administrative or criminal”, made “before a competent official”, and article 3.2 mentions reports made in an “administrative procedure”; but article 3.1, which sets out who may apply for the declaration, only allows it in family cases, sexual offences and child maintenance arrears. The text therefore does not clarify whether a report made to a Local Children’s Office (Oficina Local de la Niñez) or to the Office of the Children’s Ombudsperson (Defensoría de la Niñez) could be declared false. The following may apply for a declaration of falsity within one year: a person reported before a family court who obtained a ruling that ruled out their involvement or the fact; a person reported or subject to a criminal complaint for a sexual offence whose case was “dismissed by a ruling of the Public Prosecutor’s Office or the Guarantee Judge” (Juez de Garantía, the judge who supervises the criminal investigation); and a person subjected to interim (protective) measures for non-existent child maintenance arrears (art. 3.1). In sexual offences, on our reading, the procedure can also be opened following a provisional closure (archivo provisional), a use of the discretion not to investigate or a decision not to proceed by the prosecutors.

The procedure begins in summary (monitory) form, without a hearing (art. 3.3, letters c and d). If the judge considers the application “sufficiently well-founded”, the judge grants it immediately and sets a fine and damages without hearing the person who reported, who has fifteen days to object; if they do not object, the ruling has the force of a final judgment. If they object, a single hearing is scheduled within thirty days, which cannot be suspended because the parties fail to appear, and judgment is given at the hearing or within five days. The only remedy against it is an appeal with non-suspensive effect only (en el solo efecto devolutivo) (art. 3.5), which means that the judgment is enforced while the Court of Appeals reviews it.

To declare the report false, “at least well-founded presumptions” are required that the accusation was made “with knowledge of its falsity or with manifest negligence (‘manifiesta negligencia’) as to its truth”. The same article adds that the ruling that dismissed the report “shall not be sufficient, by itself” (art. 3.3, letter l), which contradicts the definition in article 2. The judgment serves as sufficient grounds for criminal action, orders reparations, provides for the deletion of the records of the original case at the Civil Registry (Registro Civil), the Judiciary (Poder Judicial) and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and orders an extract to be published in the national press on three consecutive days (art. 3.4).

Expert witnesses, auxiliaries of justice and staff of accredited partner organisations of the State (organismos colaboradores) who issued reports in the original case are liable when the report is declared false and they acted with intent or gross negligence, or when they “omitted relevant information in their reports that they knew or should have known” (art. 4). They are jointly and severally liable with the person who reported and are barred from issuing reports for two to five years, and for life if they reoffend, unless they prove that they acted in accordance with the lex artis and were deceived. The text does not clarify whether the four grounds in the article are cumulative or alternative.

Article 5 punishes with imprisonment (presidio menor en grado medio a máximo) of 541 days to five years and a fine of 21 to 60 UTM (unidad tributaria mensual, a Chilean unit of account) anyone who, “outside the cases provided for in article 211 of the Criminal Code”, makes a report “that is declared false in accordance with the procedure established in article 3”. The offence does not require intent of its own: it rests on the declaration of falsity, which may be based on negligence. The penalty is applied in its maximum degree if the report concerns sexual offences or was made in a family case, and rises by one degree if the reported person was subject to interim measures or was separated from their children. Retraction reduces the penalty only if it is also made in all the media and social networks where the report was disseminated, at the expense of the person who reported.

The Family, Children and Adolescents Committee approved the bill in general and in particular on 11 August 2026, by two votes to one, with drafting changes only; the text that reaches this Committee is the one this brief analyses. The bill has “immediate discussion” urgency. On 5 October the Women and Gender Equity Committee (Comisión de la Mujer y Equidad de Género) rejected the general approval of the bill (idea de legislar) by three votes to two, and the bill passed to this Committee.

The risk to children and adolescents comes from the design. In sexual offences, the procedure can also be opened following a closure by the prosecutors; the person who reported may be ordered to pay without having been heard if they do not object within fifteen days; the standard for declaring falsity admits negligence and is lower than the one required for a criminal conviction; and since the new offence rests on that declaration, negligence enters criminal law by that route.

Observations of the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice

The two institutions that reviewed the text before this Committee agreed on its central problems.

The Supreme Court, in Official Letter (Oficio) No. 138-2026 (8 June 2026), concluded that the summary procedure “would not appear to be appropriate”. In Chile that procedure is used for petty offences punishable only by a fine and for low-value labour claims; here there is no value threshold that would justify sacrificing adversarial proceedings, nor evidence that the applications are mostly well-founded. The Court warned that the declaration of falsity “constitutes the only element of the criminal offence” in article 5, so that a ruling issued without a hearing can serve as the basis for a prison sentence. It also observed that the text does not set a standard of proof but confuses the fact to be proved with a means of proof; that it does not define who may be the subject of an application, which would allow the action to be brought even against prosecutors; and it asked that the bill be reconciled with the duty to report in article 175 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, expressly mentioning school heads, inspectors and teachers at educational establishments.

The Minister of Justice, Fernando Rabat, told the Family Committee that the legal system already offers remedies for these cases: civil liability for injurious imputations (art. 2331 of the Civil Code), calumnia (the Criminal Code offence of falsely imputing an offence to someone), obstruction of justice, final dismissal and costs. He warned that sexual offences are difficult to prove and that many end without a conviction because of the criminal standard of proof, so that the cases meeting the requirements for applying for a declaration of falsity will be numerous; that the new procedure may summon again a child who has already given evidence in the criminal proceedings; that at least six grounds for final dismissal bear no relation to a false accusation; that the deletion of records impairs the justice system’s ability to track cases; and that the liability imposed on experts discourages the preparation of reports. Instead of the new offence, he proposed increasing by one degree the penalty under article 211 when the false information leads the Public Prosecutor’s Office to request interim measures or to bring an indictment. The Minister considered it advisable to continue the legislative process so as to correct the bill along the way. In a later presentation to the Senate, the Ministry described the bill’s objective as worthwhile, acknowledged the problem of restraining orders (medidas cautelares de alejamiento) issued without sufficient evidence, and considered it reasonable to study procedural changes that do not put victims of domestic violence at risk.

Besides the Executive, the Family Committee heard from organisations of parents and of people who describe themselves as falsely reported, a lawyer and a psychiatrist, all in favour of the bill. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Office of the Children’s Ombudsperson (Defensoría de la Niñez) and organisations that work with child victims of sexual abuse did not appear.

Reports that end without a conviction

A report that ends without a conviction is not, for that reason, a false report. In sexual offences against children and adolescents, most cases are closed because not enough evidence was gathered to continue, and not because it was established that the events did not occur.

Fundación Amparo y Justicia tracked, using Public Prosecutor’s Office data obtained through freedom of information requests (Transparencia), how reports of sexual offences against children and adolescents end, according to the year in which they were filed. 2018 is compared with 2022 because many of the 2023 and 2024 cases are still open.

Type of closure (% of closed relationships) 2018 2022
Provisional closure (archivo provisional) 61.1% 74.1%
Conviction 12.8% 6.5%
Decision not to proceed 6.1% 4.5%
Final dismissal (sobreseimiento definitivo), including under art. 240 8.4% 4.1%
Discretion not to investigate 5.6% 3.4%
Lack of jurisdiction 3.3% 5.7%
Acquittal 2.3% 0.9%

Source: Fundación Amparo y Justicia (2025), table 6. A relationship is the link between one offence, one victim and one suspect (imputado); the rows do not add up to 100% because less frequent types of closure are omitted.

Provisional closure, which applies when there is not enough information to continue investigating and allows the case to be reopened if new information emerges, rose from six to seven out of every ten closures between 2018 and 2022. Over the same period the proportion of reports that reached formal charging (formalización) fell from 19.3% to 8% (2023), and cases closed without a judicial outcome rose from 70.6% to 84.3%. The Public Prosecutor’s Office’s own figures for the first half of 2026, which include adult victims and count the closures in the period, show the same picture for sexual offences: 63.2% provisional closures, 9.6% convictions and 1.8% acquittals.

When a sexual offence case reaches judgment, the court convicts in the great majority of cases: 85% of judgments in the 2018 cohort, 88% in the 2022 cohort and 84% of judgments in cases closed in the first half of 2026. Acquittal, which is the ruling closest to a finding that the events did not occur, accounts for less than 2% of closures in the 2022 cohort and in the first half of 2026. Fundación Amparo y Justicia warned in 2025 that the high number of closures has been presented in public debate as proof of an increase in false reports, which confuses lack of evidence with falsity.

Chile has no official measurement of false reports, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office does not publish how many article 211 cases end in a conviction. The only nationally representative sample we know of on the subject, the Canadian child maltreatment incidence study analysed by Trocmé and Bala (2005), found that 4% of the investigated reports were knowingly fabricated and 31% were unsubstantiated but were made in good faith; that is, for every fabricated report there were almost eight unsubstantiated reports made in good faith. In custody disputes the proportion of fabricated reports rose to 12%, and those who made them most often were anonymous reporters and non-custodial parents, while custodial parents and the children themselves did so least often. The data are from 1998 and cover maltreatment in general; even with that limitation, they contradict the premise of the bill, which associates false reporting with the person who has custody of the child.

Among the cases that end without a conviction, the procedure does not distinguish between the invented report and the one that could not be proved, and for that reason it falls above all on the latter. In sexual offences, the text allows the use of the outcomes decided by the prosecutors or the supervisory judge: provisional closure, discretion not to investigate, decision not to proceed and dismissals. For the 2022 cases, those outcomes add up to 86% of closures, some 23,000 relationships a year. The figure overstates the real universe, because about half of the sexual offences that enter the system have no identified suspect and, in those cases, there is no one who can apply for the declaration; even so, the order of magnitude is thousands of reports a year. Amendment 2 proposes expressly excluding the outcomes decided by the prosecutors.

The dark figure of child sexual abuse

The bill acts on the minority of victims who do report. Research by the CUIDA Centre of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile using the National Survey on Sexual Abuse and Childhood Adversity, conducted together with Fundación para la Confianza among 2,101 people aged 18 to 65, estimates that 18.5% of the population suffered sexual abuse before the age of 18. Of those victims, 9 in 100 reported to Carabineros, the PDI or the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and 3 in 100 saw the perpetrator convicted.

Indicator Weighted percentage
Suffered sexual abuse before the age of 18 (population aged 18 to 65) 18.5%
Victims who never told anyone 37.6%
Victims who reported to Carabineros, the PDI or the Public Prosecutor’s Office 9.0%
Victims who saw the perpetrator convicted 3.3%

Source: research by the CUIDA UC Centre using the National Survey on Sexual Abuse and Childhood Adversity. 397 victims aged 18 to 65; weighted percentages.

37.6% of victims never told anyone what happened, a proportion that reaches 55.3% among men and 32.4% among women. Of those who did tell, half did so within the first year and one in five took ten years or more, which, with an average age at first abuse of ten, means telling in adulthood. Law 21.160, which removed the statute of limitations for sexual offences against children and adolescents, recognises this delayed disclosure. Among those who reported to the criminal justice system, one in three saw the perpetrator convicted, with a wide margin of error because of the small base.

The survey measures the experience of adults from several generations, with events dating back to the 1970s, and its sample is urban and covers thirteen regions. Its rates therefore describe historical trajectories and not the current functioning of the criminal justice system. Reports of sexual offences against children and adolescents quadrupled between 2006 and 2024, reaching 40,754, but Fundación Amparo y Justicia warns that it is not possible to know whether the increase reflects more abuse or a greater willingness to report, and that it is not rigorous to estimate unreported cases by subtracting reports from survey data. For that reason this brief does not estimate a current dark figure and uses the direct measurement from the survey. Any rule that raises the cost of reporting will operate on a system that, in the generations measured, fewer than one in ten victims reached.

The duty to report in schools and health centres

The bill places those whom the law obliges to report between two penalties: the one that currently punishes failing to report and the new one that would punish reporting when the case does not end in a conviction. The Code of Criminal Procedure requires school heads, inspectors and teachers to report offences affecting their pupils, and heads of health establishments and health professionals to report those they learn of in the course of their work (art. 175, letters d and e), within the following 24 hours (art. 176), and it penalises failure to do so (art. 177). The law does not require certainty of them; it requires them to communicate what they know so that those competent to investigate can do so.

In 2024, 20.9% of reports of sexual offences against children and adolescents were received by organisations whose staff are obliged to report, including educational and health establishments. The Amparo y Justicia study also cites research according to which school closures during the pandemic reduced reports of rape by 17% and of sexual abuse by 43% (Clarke et al., 2022), and suggests that schools can be an important channel through which these events reach the justice system. The Public Prosecutor’s Office database does not make it possible to separate how many reports come from schools and how many from health centres, and we propose that the Committee request that breakdown before voting.

The authors of the bill may reply that a teacher who followed the protocol does not act with manifest negligence and would not be convicted, and in the final outcome that may be so. But the procedure is opened on the mere application of the person who was acquitted or whose case was dismissed, may end in an order to pay without a hearing if the person who reported does not object within fifteen days, is otherwise decided in a single hearing on a standard of well-founded presumptions, and exposes the person who reported, even if they win, to defence costs, a damages claim and publicity. It is reasonable to expect schools and health centres to respond with protocols that demand more certainty before reporting, and that certainty can only be obtained by questioning the child or by waiting for the events to happen again, which is what Law 21.057 on video-recorded interviews seeks to avoid.

The bill also creates an asymmetry with public accusation. It only reaches those who report “to a competent authority”; a person who airs a suspicion on social media, without reporting it, falls outside the falsity procedure and the new offence, and remains subject only to the Criminal Code offences of calumnia and injuria (false imputation of an offence, and insult). To convict for calumnia, it must be proved in a criminal trial, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the imputation was false, and the person against whom the complaint is brought may prove that it was true. To convict the person who reported, by contrast, the bill is satisfied with a declaration of falsity based on well-founded presumptions, which may rest on negligence and which, according to the Supreme Court, is the only element of the offence. A person who suspects abuse would thus run less legal risk by airing it publicly than by taking it to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. It is reasonable to expect that difference to push some people towards public exposure, which leaves the child without a video-recorded interview or an investigation, and the person accused without due process. A law that invokes the presumption of innocence would end up favouring the form of accusation that respects it least.

When in doubt, current law allocates the error in favour of the child, because it prefers a report that is not proved to abuse that continues. The bill reverses that allocation, because it makes the error of reporting more costly for the adult than the error of keeping silent. The Committee on the Rights of the Child asks for the opposite: that professionals who work with children be required to report suspicions of violence and that there be processes to protect them when they act in good faith (General comment No. 13, para. 49). Amendment 4 excludes from the procedure those who are obliged to report and the establishments where they work.

Experts, psychologists and protection programmes

Article 4 extends liability for the report to those who assessed it. Expert witnesses, auxiliaries of justice and staff of private bodies or accredited partner organisations of the State who issued “psychological, psychiatric, social, medical or any other technical reports” in the original case are “personally liable” when the report is declared false; when they acted with intent or gross negligence, issuing reports that are “manifestly false, biased or without methodological basis”; when they omitted relevant information “that they knew or should have known”; and when the expert report served as the essential basis for granting interim measures, formal charging, indictment or conviction. They are jointly and severally liable with the person who reported for direct loss, loss of earnings and non-pecuniary damage (daño emergente, lucro cesante and daño moral). The court also refers the case file to their professional association or their superior for a disciplinary inquiry (sumario), and orders their disqualification from issuing reports for two to five years, for life if they reoffend.

The text does not clarify whether those four grounds must all be met or whether one is enough. The “and” before the fourth suggests that they are cumulative, but if they are read as alternatives, it would be enough for the report to be declared false and for the expert report to have been the basis for an interim measure. Nor does the exemption offer enough protection: the professional is only released if they prove that they acted in accordance with the lex artis and, in addition, that their conclusions derived from false information they could not have detected, so that the burden of proving good practice falls on them. The Supreme Court observed that the bill does not require these professionals to be summoned or identified in the procedure that may declare them liable. The Minister of Justice warned that, since there are at least six grounds for dismissal unrelated to falsity, liability would arise for experts “without their having taken part in any fraud”, and that the rule discourages those who prepare expert assessments and reports.

The scope is broad. The programmes of the National Service for the Specialised Protection of Children and Adolescents (Mejor Niñez) that carry out assessment and recovery (reparation) interventions for maltreatment and sexual abuse are mostly run by accredited partner organisations, and they report regularly to the family courts. It is reasonable to expect that, under this rule, fewer professionals will agree to assess cases of child sexual abuse, that reports will become defensive and avoid conclusions, or that programmes will demand more certainty before reporting. Any of those responses reduces the information with which the courts protect children. Amendment 8 proposes limiting the liability of experts and partner organisations to intent, channelling professional negligence through disciplinary proceedings, and guaranteeing them the right to be heard.

Convention on the Rights of the Child

The bill compromises the best interests of the child in their dimension as a rule of procedure and, through that route, six other articles of the Convention. The bill invokes best interests in only one direction, that of the child deprived of contact with a falsely reported parent, and does not assess the effect on the child or adolescent who was in fact a victim of abuse and whose case ended without a conviction.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child requires that every decision affecting children, including laws, contain “an evaluation of the possible impact (positive or negative)” on them and explain how their interests were weighed against other considerations (General comment No. 14, para. 6 (c)). The obligation extends to legislative bodies (para. 31) and entails assessing the impact of the law on the rights of the child before adopting it (paras. 35 and 99). The bill contains no such assessment. The same Committee warns that parents have used the best interests of the child to defend their own interests in custody disputes (para. 34), and establishes that, when the interests of the child conflict with those of other persons, the child’s interests have high priority (para. 39).

Article What it requires, according to the Committee How the bill compromises it
3.1, best interests Prior assessment of the impact of every law on children and precaution against future risks (GC 14, paras. 6, 35, 74 and 99) Does not assess the effect on the reporting of real abuse or on the child whose account is declared false
19, protection from violence Reporting mechanisms that do not give rise to “essentially punitive” responses, and protection of those who report in good faith (GC 13, para. 49) Exposes those who report in good faith to penalties, including those obliged to report under art. 175 of the Code of Criminal Procedure
19, investigation Care not to cause the child further harm during the investigation (GC 13, para. 51) Opens a second trial on the same events, in a single hearing and without rules protecting the child
12, right to be heard Interventions that do not further inhibit children who have experienced violence (GC 13, para. 63) The child is not a party to, and is not heard in, the trial that declares their account false
34, protection from sexual abuse All appropriate measures to prevent the sexual abuse of children Raises the cost of reporting in sexual offences, where it increases the penalty
39, recovery Recovery in an environment that fosters the dignity of the child (GC 13, para. 52) Public retraction and the declaration of falsity discredit the child in the eyes of those around them
16, privacy Protection against interference with the privacy of the child Publication of the judgment in the national press may identify them
40, adolescents in the criminal justice system Rehabilitative aims when the offender is an adolescent (GC 14, para. 28) Does not exclude adolescents from liability for the new offence, with an increased penalty if they report sexual abuse

Adolescents are also on the other side of the procedure. In the first half of 2026, 18% of the known suspects in sexual offence cases were adolescents, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the exclusion we propose must protect them as reporters without affecting their defence as suspects.

The deletion of records ordered by article 3.4 also compromises the future protection of other children. A closed case can be reopened if new information emerges, and in child sexual abuse that information often comes from other victims of the same perpetrator, not convicted in the first case, who report years later. If the record of the first report has been erased, the Public Prosecutor’s Office loses the ability to link the cases. Article 19 of the Convention requires effective procedures for the identification, investigation and follow-up of violence against children, and erasing the trace of an unproven report runs in the opposite direction.

The bill has a real argument in article 9.3: a child separated from their father or mother by an invented report suffers a violation of their right to maintain contact with both. The Convention recognises this, but makes that contact subject to its not being contrary to the best interests of the child, and the Committee asks that such decisions be taken case by case, without automatic rules in favour of either parent (GC 14, paras. 60 and 67). The bill responds to that problem with a general rule that harms the children and adolescents who were in fact victims of abuse and whose case could not be proved, and those who reported in good faith on their behalf. The Undersecretary for Children (Subsecretario de la Niñez) invoked articles 3, 9 and 12 of the Convention before the Family Committee in support of the bill, but described as a violation the report made “with direct intent” and recommended penalising that conduct, which is what amendment 1 proposes.

Other international standards

The United Nations Guidelines on Justice in Matters involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime (ECOSOC resolution 2005/20) call for those children to be treated with tact and sensitivity throughout the process (para. 10). The Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (Lanzarote, 2007), to which Chile is not a party, provides in article 12 that professional confidentiality does not prevent the reporting of reasonable suspicions of abuse and that States must encourage reporting in good faith. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in V.R.P., V.P.C. et al. v. Nicaragua (2018), established an enhanced duty of due diligence and of avoiding re-victimisation in investigations of sexual violence against girls.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women analysed in her report A/HRC/53/36 (2023) the use of “parental alienation” and similar concepts in custody litigation to discredit reports of violence against mothers and children, and recommended prohibiting their use. The report has been disputed by researchers who defend that concept. This brief takes no position in the clinical dispute and merely notes that the bill brings into criminal law a premise that is under scientific debate and that United Nations bodies have questioned.

Comparative law

None of the legal systems reviewed criminalises negligent reporting, since all of them require knowledge of the falsity or, at most, reckless disregard for the truth. The country that brought “false reporting” into family conflict as a distinct concept, Brazil, now faces calls for its repeal.

Country Rule Mental element Prior filter Observable result
Chile, current law Criminal Code, art. 211 Report made “maliciously” Ordinary criminal proceedings Allows the invented report to be punished
Chile, bill Bill 18.239-36 Knowledge of the falsity or “manifest negligence” Family cases and reports of sexual offences dismissed, including by decision of the prosecutors, within one year; summary phase without a hearing Reaches good-faith reports that could not be proved
Spain Criminal Code, art. 456 “Knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for the truth” Only after a final judgment or a final order of dismissal or closure by the court that heard the case 79 convictions for false reporting against 1,055,912 reports of gender-based violence between 2009 and 2016, according to the Office of the State Attorney General (Fiscalía General del Estado)
England and Wales Common law offence of perverting the course of justice Deliberate falsehood Between 2011 and 2012, personal review by the Director of Public Prosecutions of every case of alleged false allegation of rape or domestic violence 35 prosecutions for false allegations of rape against 5,651 prosecutions for rape over 17 months (CPS, 2013)
Brazil Law 12.318 of 2010, on “parental alienation” The family law counts “filing a false report” against the other parent as an act of “alienation” Family judge United Nations experts (2022) and the National Human Rights Council (Conselho Nacional dos Direitos Humanos, 2022) recommended its repeal

Spain shows that a false reporting offence can coexist with an active policy against violence if it requires intent and a prior judicial filter; with those requirements, convictions are exceptional. The Chilean bill provides for neither safeguard. England and Wales shows that, when the State decided to prosecute false reports in sexual violence, it centralised the decision in the highest authority of the prosecution service, whereas the bill hands the action to the reported person themselves. Finally, Brazil is the closest precedent to the bill, because it brought the suspicion of false reporting into family litigation, and it is today a law whose repeal is being debated.

The problem the bill invokes

The testimony received by the Family Committee describes real harm. An interim measure ordered solely on the strength of a report can suspend for months or years the relationship of a child with one of their parents, even if the case ends without a conviction; as the lawyer Romina Tapia told that Committee, Law 21.675 requires interim measures to be adopted in the face of imminent risk solely on the strength of the report and, in that case, the suspension of contact arrangements (relación directa y regular). That harm stems from the duration of the measures and the lack of coordination between family and criminal justice, not from good-faith reporting, and the bill does not correct it: it penalises afterwards, when the bond has already been broken.

The Undersecretary for Children, Marcelo Sánchez, acknowledged before the same Committee that reports made with direct intent are a statistical minority, and proposed specialised expert assessments of the credibility of accounts, criminal penalties for reports made with direct intent, and proportionate interim measures, such as supervised visits or visits at contact centres while the investigation proceeds. We propose that the Committee explore that route: maximum time limits for reviewing interim measures that suspend contact with a parent, supervised contact when the risk assessment allows it, and mandatory coordination between the family court and the prosecutors. Those measures address the harm that motivated the bill without raising the cost of reporting child sexual abuse.

Proposed amendments

The Foundation asks the Committee to reject the general approval of the bill (idea de legislar) and, if it considers it necessary to improve the response to invented reports, to do so by amending article 211 of the Criminal Code, as the Minister of Justice proposed: increasing the penalty when the malicious report has led to interim measures or to an indictment. If the Committee gives the bill its general approval, we propose the following amendments:

  1. Direct intent. Penalise only reports made with knowledge of their falsity, and remove “manifest negligence” throughout the text.
  2. Lack of evidence and falsity. Exclude provisional closure, the discretion not to investigate and the decision not to proceed as grounds for the action; declare that acquittal and dismissal are not sufficient by themselves to apply for a declaration of falsity and do not constitute an indication of it; and replace the standard of “well-founded presumptions” with proof beyond all reasonable doubt.
  3. Prior filter. Have the action brought by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, or require the authorisation of the court that heard the original case, after it has found indications of intentional falsity, as in article 456.2 of the Spanish Criminal Code.
  4. Mandated reporters. Exclude from the procedure those required to report under article 175 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the educational and health establishments where they work, and those who report on behalf of a child, unless it is proved that they knew the fact was false, in line with the Supreme Court’s observation on the duty of school heads, inspectors and teachers to report.
  5. Children and adolescents. Exclude them from liability for the new offence and from the falsity declaration procedure when they are the ones who reported.
  6. Aggravating circumstance. Remove the one that applies the penalty in its maximum degree when the report concerns sexual offences or is made in a family case.
  7. Protection of the child in the procedure. Prohibit summoning the child to give evidence again, use only the record of the interview under Law 21.057, guarantee the confidentiality of the child’s identity, and remove the publication of the judgment when the original case involves a child.
  8. Experts and partner organisations. Limit their liability to intent and channel professional negligence through disciplinary proceedings, without joint and several civil liability or lifetime disqualification, and require that they be summoned and heard before any liability is attributed to them.
  9. Impact assessment and participation. Before the vote on general approval, commission a child rights impact assessment (GC 14, para. 99) and hear the Office of the Children’s Ombudsperson and children and adolescents (GC 14, para. 91).
  10. Data. Instruct the Public Prosecutor’s Office to keep an annual public register of reports declared false by judgment, by type of offence, and of cases and convictions under article 211, so that the debate is based on figures.
  11. Summary phase. Remove the ruling that grants the application without hearing the person who reported, and always require a hearing with legal counsel, which the State must provide when the person cannot afford it.
  12. Appeal. Grant the appeal with suspensive effect (en ambos efectos), so that publication, payments and the deletion of records are not enforced before the judgment becomes final.
  13. Records. Replace the deletion of the records of the original case with a confidential annotation of the falsity judgment, so that the Public Prosecutor’s Office retains the ability to link later reports against the same person.
  14. Application and standing as respondent. Set the minimum content of the application and define who may be the subject of it, excluding prosecutors and officials acting in performance of a legal duty, as the Supreme Court observed.

Sources

Read the executive summary

Read and sign the statement

Fundación para la Confianza · The false reports bill · October 2026

Translation by Fundación Para la Confianza. In case of any difference, the Spanish version prevails. Spanish version.