The Federal Supreme Court (STF) decided this Friday (20) to annul the acquittal of businessman André Aranha in the case involving influencer Mariana Ferrer. Unanimously among the ministers who participated in the trial on the merits, the Court concluded that the hearing held during the process was marked by violations of the victim’s fundamental rights, which compromised the validity of the evidence produced.
With the decision, the process returns to the first instance of the Santa Catarina Court and must be resumed from the phase considered contaminated by the irregularities highlighted by the ministers.
The judgment also established a thesis of general repercussion that began to guide similar cases across the country.
The STF defined that evidence obtained in sexual crimes cases can be annulled when the victim is subjected to constraints that affect their dignity, honor, intimacy or psychological integrity during the production of the evidence.
“Cruel treatment”
Case rapporteur, Minister Alexandre de Moraes maintained that the hearing held in 2020 went beyond the limits of the right to defense and turned into an episode of revictimization.
When presenting his vote, Moraes showed excerpts from the session in which Mariana Ferrer was interrogated and classified the conduct of the act as a “shame” for the Justice system. According to him, the victim suffered attacks incompatible with the guarantees provided for by the Constitution.
“There is no doubt that there was total disrespect for the victim’s fundamental rights, there was revictimization, there was cruel and inhumane treatment,” stated the minister.
Moraes also criticized the stance adopted by members of the Justice system present at the hearing. For the rapporteur, the omission in the face of the offenses contributed to invalidating one of the central pieces of evidence in the process: the victim’s own testimony.
Institutional violence
The case originated from a rape complaint filed by Mariana Ferrer after an episode that occurred in 2018, in a nightclub in Jurerê Internacional, in Florianópolis.
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The police investigation identified André Aranha as the perpetrator of the crime. The businessman was accused of raping a vulnerable person and arrested during investigations.
In 2020, however, the Santa Catarina Court acquitted him because it understood that there was not enough evidence to prove the circumstances alleged by the accusation. The decision was upheld in the second instance the following year.
The episode gained national repercussion after the release of the video of the hearing in which Mariana appears crying while being the target of comments considered offensive by the businessman’s defense lawyer.
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With the decision, the case returns to the Santa Catarina Court for new analysis, now under the guidelines established by the STF for the protection of victims of sexual crimes.
