The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) confirmed today that it has received the report of the independent commission of the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra and that it will analyze whether there is any criminal matter.
According to a source at the Coimbra Public Prosecutor’s Office, the independent commission’s report, made public last week, was delivered on Tuesday.
“The report will now be read to see if there is anything that could lead to an investigation and a public or semi-public crime, if there is a complaint,” the source explained to Lusa.
Three female researchers who worked at the University of Coimbra’s CES denounced harassment about a year ago in a chapter of the book entitled “Sexual Misconduct in Academia – Towards an Ethic of Care at the University”, which led to researchers Boaventura Sousa Santos and Bruno Sena Martins being suspended from all their positions at CES.
The independent commission set up to investigate complaints at CES released its report on the 13th, confirming the existence of patterns of conduct involving abuse of power and harassment by people in senior positions.
“The analysis of all the information gathered, as well as the versions between the whistleblowers and the whistleblowers that were compatible with each other, indicate patterns of conduct of abuse of power and harassment on the part of some people who held senior positions in the CES hierarchy,” revealed the final report of the independent commission, which began work in August 2023.
When the report was presented to the public, the director of CES, Tiago Santos Pereira, admitted that he was going to refer all the complaints to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, because they could have some kind of criminal value.
According to the report, 14 people were reported to the independent commission by 32 complainants, out of a total of 78 complaints.
Seventy-eight percent of whistleblowers are women, six percent are men and in 16% of cases it was not possible to identify the gender because the complaint was made anonymously.
Twenty-eight percent of the complaints concern cases of moral harassment, 19% sexual harassment, 8% sexual abuse, 27% abuse of power and 18% fall into other categories.
The report also refers to the fact that, over the years, the various CES directorates have undervalued certain situations that show signs of inappropriate behavior in relations between members of their community.
“In doing so, they may have contributed to their possible perpetuation. Specifically, the way in which they dealt with the ‘graffiti’, which began in 2017, ignoring and failing to act administratively and judicially, indicates a frivolous way of acting on alleged behavior that should, on the part of an executive body, be taken very seriously, namely through an internal investigation.”
The report’s conclusions also led to the publication of an open letter on the CES website apologizing to the victims of possible practices of moral and sexual harassment and abuse of power committed by researchers at the institution, and the possibility of opening disciplinary proceedings against those accused is being assessed.
