By 8 votes to 3, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) has defined that the Maria da Penha Law can be extended to homosexual couples.
During judgment in the court’s virtual plenary, the ministers also understood that the legislation can be expanded to transvestite or transsexual women in intrafamily relations.
In the virtual plenary, the ministers present their votes on an STF page, without the need for face -to -face judgment. The analysis of this process began on February 14 and ended this Friday (21).
According to the rapporteur of the case, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, the absence of a norm that extends the protection of the Maria da Penha Law to male homoaffective couples and transgender and transvestite women “can generate a gap in protection and punishment against domestic violence.” .
According to a recent report from the National Council of Justice (CNJ), the most identified crime against transvestites and gay people in Brazil was the murder (80% and 42.5%, respectively), while, in the case of lesbians, were identified crimes with higher incidence body injury (36%) and injury (32%). Trans women appeared, in greater numbers, as victims of
threat crimes (42.9%).
In his vote, the magistrate argued that “it is possible to extend the incidence of the norm to homosexual couples, if contextual factors that insert the man victim of violence in the position of subordination within the relationship.”
“This is because gender identity, although social, is one aspect of personality and is inserted the right to identity, intimacy, privacy, freedom, and isonomic treatment, all protected by the greater value of the dignity of the person human, ”he said.
In the case of transsexuals and transvestites, the minister argued that “the expression ‘woman’ contained in the law is worth both female and female, since external physical conformation is only one but not the only one of the character’s defining characteristics ”.
“It imposes on the State the obligation to protect the goods and freedoms of citizens in the aggressions of other citizens, as well as the need to adopt protection or prevention measures to combat the conduct of violence perpetrated in the family,” Moraes said in your vote.
Moraes was followed by ministers Luis Roberto Barroso, Flávio Dino, Gilmar Mendes, Dias Toffoli, Cármen Lúcia, Nunes Marques and Luiz Fux.
Already Cristiano Zanin, André Mendonça and Edson Fachin agreed with the rapporteur, however, with the caveat of “impossibility of applying sanctions of a criminal nature whose type is presumed to the victim woman.” The three, however, were vote overdue.
Maria da Penha Law
The Maria da Penha Law was sanctioned by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) in 2006. The norm is considered a milestone in the defense of women’s rights in Brazil.
Maria da Penha was a pharmacist and survived an attempted murder practiced by her ex-husband.
For years, she had to fight for the perpetrator to be punished after the acts of violence that made her paraplegic.
The law defines measures to protect victims from violence, such as the creation of special courts of domestic violence, the granting of urgent protective measures and the guarantee of care for victims.
