Man Arrested for Sexually Harassing President Sheinbaum in Public
What Are Men Doing in Private to Women Without Power?
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“If they do this to the president, then what’s going to happen to all the young women in our country?” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said of the sexual harassment she experienced while mingling with a crowd on November 4, 2025.
A man made his way past other people, put his arm around Mexico’s 66th and first female president, pulled her close to him and tried to kiss her neck before reaching to grope her breast and barely missing before her security intercepted the man.
“What should have been a five-minute time-saving walk from Mexico’s National Palace to the Education Ministry for President Claudia Sheinbaum has become a symbol of what Mexican women face every day after a video captured a drunk man groping the country’s first woman president,” the Associated Press reported the following day.
The high-profile incident not only platforms the ubiquity of sexual harassment, it raises several issues.
If a man feels comfortable enough to try to fondle his country’s president in broad daylight in front of her security personnel, what do men feel emboldened to get away with in private?
If a man tries to kiss and grope a 63-year-old woman with the most power in the entire country and a security team in a crowd of people, how enabled are boys and men to harass or assault teenage girls on a crowded bus or at school or in the home?
What are men doing to women and girls they have authority over?
What happens when you don’t have proof you’ve been sexually harassed?
What happens to all the men and boys who harass, assault, and abuse women but don’t get caught on camera? What happens to their victims?
“I say this not as president, but as a woman and on behalf of Mexican women. It should not happen. No one can violate our personal space, no one. No man has the right to violate that space,” President Sheinbaum also emphasized consent in her condemnation of the incident.
“These types of violence should not be trivialized; on the contrary, denouncing them is fundamental to achieving justice and contributing to a cultural shift, which also involves how they are addressed by the media and in our everyday conversations,” the newly established (under President Claudia Sheinbaum) government ministry the Secretariat of Women reported.
Sheinbaum called on all 31 Mexican states beyond the federal district of Mexico City to review both their anti-sexual harassment laws and their reporting procedures.
Although the new ministry reports that 19 states show advances in what they consider “criteria and aggravating factors” in classifying sexual harassment as a crime, only half of Mexico’s 32 federal entities legally recognize it as such. (*See below for the 16 that do recognize sexual harassment as a crime.)
Their Plan Integral Contra Abuso Sexual seeks to facilitate reporting so that the justice system works for all Mexican women. They are working with legislators and prosecutors in proposing that sexual harassment and assault be recognized as a crime in all 32 federal entities.
“I decided to press charges because this is something that I experienced as a woman, but that we as women experience in our country,” President Sheinbaum said. “A line must be drawn.”
Guadalajara-based author and longtime community volunteer Terrill Martinez emphasized the need for substantive structural changes as well.
“Let’s hope she does something to make reporting easier, for women to be believed, and that she increases the punishment for this kind of crime—something that happens daily here, to hundreds of women probably, in every city,” Martinez said.
“And let’s hope this does go to trial to platform what all women have to go through,” Michelle Smith, another Guadalajara-based author says. She’s lived in Mexico for more than 25 years and thinks a highly publicized trial is a necessary step to illuminate both the magnitude of the problem and the inexcusable scarcity of consequences, let alone solutions.
The president did not say she was pressing charges because she believed in the efficacy of the judicial system to penalize offenders and thereby change a culture in which men and boys feel free to commit sexual harassment, in a country where an estimated 92% of all crimes go unpunished and an estimated 95% of femicides go unpunished.
President Sheinbaum didn’t speak from the presence of known justice for the overwhelmingly female victims, she spoke out in spite of the historical absence of social and legal consequences for male perpetrators.
Impunity is exhausting and demoralizing. That’s why so many women in countries all over the world never bother to report sexually motivated crimes. In Mexico, only one out of 10 sexual violence victims reports their attack.
In the U.S., “For every 1000 sexual assaults, 50 reports lead to arrests, 28 cases lead to a felony convictions, and only 25 perpetrators are sentenced to incarceration,” according to FBI incident-based reporting statistics.
Mexico offers a free and confidential 24-hour crisis hotline (079 opción 1) but women all over the world know they will be doubted if not outright accused of exaggerating or lying to ruin a man’s reputation. Even if we are lucky enough to not fear retribution from the initial attacker, we know that we are likely to be re-victimized by an ineffective if not corrupt judicial systems.
Even if a perpetrator is arrested, it is highly unlikely that he’ll be indicted or tried, and even less likely that he’ll be convicted. And in the few cases that male perpetrators are actually convicted for sexually motivated crimes, their sentencing is often minimal, reduced to community service and probation, overturned on technicalities, and even dismissed outright.
Obviously, #NotAllMen explicitly think they have a right to violate our bodies. But women don’t have clear and consistent recourse when they do. Few legal or social consequences enforce the notion that women and girls have full legal jurisdiction over their own bodies in all places and in all circumstances.
Legal systems around the world are inconsistent in what constitutes a sexual crime. Judicial systems are abysmal in enforcing what laws actually are on the books. And the astonishing lack of social repercussions exacerbates what is largely considered at least a moral offense.
The UN’s adoption of a 2022 resolution, the Universal Survivor Bill of Rights, is a start in protecting and advocating for sexual violence victims of all genders, regardless of nationality. It attempts to universalize survivors’ legal recourse, reparations, and assistance.
The man who sexually harassed Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was arrested within 24 hours. He will likely plead guilty rather than stand trial. Either way, the legal and social consequences he incurs will ideally signal that sexual harassment is a crime not worth the risk.
“It’s not rape” is not good enough. You can violate another human being without being violent.
True equality isn’t possible without sweeping legal reforms and social changes to prevent future victims from continuing to be the norm.
* Fifteen Mexican states and the federal district of Mexico City currently recognize sexual harassment as a crime: Baja California Sur, Campeche, Coahuila, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, Nayarit, Puebla, Queretaro, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Mexico State, Tamaulipas, Veracruz
I do hope you’re well, Heather