Landmark Brazilian Law Fails to Halt Rising Feminicides

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Bete speaks softly to her employers as she tries to push down her sleeves to cover her bruised arms. The red welt on her neck, however, she is unable to keep hidden.

“He gets like that when he drinks,” says the 45-year-old cleaning lady. “My daughter and I usually lock ourselves in the bathroom when we notice he is mad, but last night I couldn’t run fast enough,” she adds.

Bete, who asked that The Rio Times not use her last name, is one of the thousands of Brazilian women who are still physically abused by their husbands and partners despite a law in the country that protects women from becoming victims of violence and feminicide.

The law, dubbed Maria da Penha, turned thirteen this past week, but experts say there is little to celebrate.

“Domestic and family violence against women remains epidemic,” wrote Public Prosecutor for the state of São Paulo Fabiola Sucasas last week in an editorial in a local newspaper.

In São Paulo state alone, during the first three months of this year, 37 women were victims of feminicide, according to data provided by the São Paulo State Secretariat of Public Security. Of those murders, 26 were committed by husbands or former partners.

In the country as a whole, recent research shows that 16 million Brazilian women aged sixteen and over suffered some form of violence in 2018. “Brazil is in 5th place in the world as the country that most kills women,” says Sucasas.

According to the Atlas of Violence of 2019, 4,963 Brazilian women were killed in 2017, the highest number in ten years.

Although there is a consensus among experts that the Maria da Penha Law was a landmark in the combat of violence against women, many say that there are still deep-rooted problems.

For Daniela Borges, president of the National Commission of Women Lawyer of the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), the law is an undisputed milestone, but there is a problem: “its ineffectiveness”.

“The Maria da Penha Law has represented a very important advance in recent years, but there is still a long way to go. It is necessary to expand the safety net, with the creation of more women’s police stations, and to qualify official reception methods for women in situations of violence,” said Luciana Ramos of the ICJBrasil after a survey conducted in 2018 by Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) found that the population believed that much more had to be done to protect women’s rights.

“To live without violence is the right of women and girls. It is the basis for development and sustainability,” says Maria-Noel Vaeza, UN Regional Director Women for the Americas and the Caribbean.

The law was proposed in 1983, after Marco Antonio Heredia Viveros twice tried to kill his wife, Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes. Due to the two attacks, first by gunshot then by electrocution, Maria da Penha was left paraplegic. The law, however, was only passed in 2006, or 23 years after the attempted murders, .

Today, the law is considered by the United Nations to be one of the most advanced laws in the world regarding the fight against domestic violence. Nonetheless, violence against women in Brazil seems to be escalating.

A report released by the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights on Wednesday, August 7th, 2019, shows that the Women’s Call Center (180) received 92,663 reports of violations against women in 2018.

In the first six months of 2019, the federally government-operated Integrated Women’s Service System received 46,510 complaints, an increase of 10.93 percent over the same period last year.

Unfortunately, the violence against Bete will not be calculated among those complaints. Like many women in Brazil, the middle-aged woman is afraid to go to the police, for fear that nothing will be done and that the violence may get even worse if her husband finds out she has been complaining to authorities.

“Best to leave things as they are,” she says after being encouraged to go to a police station or at least a hospital. “At least he uses only his fists and feet, never a knife or anything sharp,” she sighs resignedly.