Violence against women increases in the first half of Lula’s government

The recent case of domestic violence against presenter Ana Hickmann has reignited the debate on domestic and gender-based violence in the country. Even though it was one of the banners of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) during the elections, the government’s measures to defend women’s rights and guarantee their safety have not yet shown concrete results.

Proof of this is that the number of femicides in Brazil continues to grow, registering an increase of 2.6% compared to the first half of last year. In total, 722 women were murdered across the country between January and June this year. The data comes from the survey “Violence against girls and women in the 1st semester of 2023”, carried out by the NGO Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP).

In the Federal District, there was a 250% increase in cases of femicide, the largest increase in the entire country, going from six femicides in the first half of 2022, to 21 in the same period this year.

“The government’s biggest problem on this issue is precisely its hypocrisy and the great distance between speech and practice”, says deputy Júlia Zanatta (PL-SC).

Regarding this jump in cases in the federal capital, Zanatta recalled that, even given these numbers, it was considered adding a project to the fiscal framework to freeze the Constitutional Fund of the DF which, among other departments, finances Public Security in the region. “So, you see that security is not a priority for the Lula government,” said the deputy.

Presenter denounced her husband for bodily harm

On November 11, Ana Hickmann reported her husband Alexandre Correa for domestic violence and bodily harm. Last Sunday (26) she gave an interview to TV Record and told details of the attack.

To the police, the presenter and model told that her husband closed the sliding kitchen door against her arm during an argument. A bruise on the elbow was discovered during medical care. Correa denies the attack.

In an interview with the Domingo Espetacular program, on TV Record, Ana Hickmann called her husband a “coward” and “scoundrel” and reported that, in addition to the aggression, he suffered psychological abuse at home. “He controlled my schedule for anything, not just my work, he determined the day for the gym, the doctor. He pestered me about the plastic surgery part after I had my son, that I had to do it,” she said.

Record number of rapes in the first half of 2023

The first half of 2023 still had a record number of rape cases, 34 thousand, 14.9% above the same period last year. This is the highest level in the last four years, when the historical series began in 2019. Since then, the number of rapes has grown year after year, with the exception of 2020, when records dropped by 20%.

According to Clicie Carvalho, manager of the Justiceiras Project, which was created by lawyer Gabriela Manssur as an alternative to combating domestic violence during the Coronavirus pandemic, the reduction in these rates, in general, is due to underreporting, which may have occurred during the pandemic due to less access to reporting and reception channels.

Furthermore, Clicie explains that crimes with a sexual connotation are always the most difficult for women to understand that they actually happened and, therefore, to find the courage to report them.

“Usually victims of sexual violence paralyze, they want to forget, they feel dirty, guilty. And women face a critical route of revictimization and blaming that includes friends, family, the police station, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Judiciary, which makes them give up halfway or take even longer to report,” she says.

Brazil has a low rate of sexual violence reports and fragile databases

There is a great lack of reliable data on public security in Brazil. The data used in the survey by the NGO Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP) are collected from the records of police reports from the Civil Police of the states and the Federal District. As they are preliminary, they can be changed during the course of the investigation or when they become procedural. As criminal statistics are the responsibility of state governments (which often do not adopt transparency parameters) and the Union does not compile the data, in practice, only the FBSP compares statistics nationally.

According to Clicie, the number of complaints is always lower than the number of real cases. In the United States, in the latest edition of the Department of Justice’s criminal victimization survey, released in September this year, the percentage of sexual violence reported to police institutions was just 21.4%.

In Brazil, a study carried out by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea) using 2019 as a reference, estimated that only 8.5% of rapes that occur in the country are registered by the police and 4.2% by health information systems .

“Society needs to understand that, often, we make legends with stories that are poeticized, but that need to be revised. It was never the boto, the girls never start early, they are even raped”, states federal deputy Silvia Waiãpi (PL-AP), citing the beliefs that hide and perpetrate sexual violence practices in the Northern region of Brazil.

Revictimization as perpetuation of sexual violence practices

The Marina Ferrer law (Law No. 14,245, in November 2021) sanctioned by President Jair Bolsonaro’s government ensures the physical and psychological integrity of victims of sexual violence, as well as witnesses, during hearings and the entire judicial process.

Waiãpi cites what happened with Senator Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF) as an example of these practices. Before being integrated into the position of Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights in the Bolsonaro government, Damares was the target of criticism and memes related to details of sexual abuse experiences during her childhood.

The deputy states that every time people discriminate or turn a “turn a blind eye” to the violence suffered by a woman, as happened to the former minister, all women, girls and teenagers suffer, as the tendency is for them to also be targets of violence. such practices.

Of the rape cases recorded in the compilation of data from the NGO Brazilian Public Security Forum, 74.5% were vulnerable. This means that the victims were under the age of 14 or were incapable of consenting (due to illness, mental disability or any other cause that cannot offer resistance).

Leniency towards crime contributes to the increase in violence against women

Another point highlighted by the parliamentarians interviewed by People’s Gazette It’s the way the current government treats crime and criminals. “The government has justified and humanized the criminal, the aggressor and it has disqualified the security forces”, says Waiãpi.

Agendas widely defended by the government, such as decarceration, maintaining the ban on police actions on hills in Rio de Janeiro, the use of cameras by military police and the anti-gun campaign itself (while criminals have access to weapons through illicit trafficking) are considered by them as condescending towards crime.

The deputy recalls the recent visit of the “Amazonian drug lady” to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security as a sign of this leniency. “When I was national secretary of health, I checked each person I met with, my secretary researched whether each visitor had processes. Those around a minister must protect his integrity and that of the institution, and that did not happen”, says Waiãpi.

Zanatta also assesses that, without the federal government’s active work against crime, it is inevitable that the number of incidents will increase. “The criminals only respect what they fear, and unfortunately they are quite comfortable with this government. The celebration in several prisons after the announcement of the election results says a lot”, says the parliamentarian.

Deputy defends women’s access to firearms for defense

According to her, the increase in violence in the country demonstrates the government’s disregard for Public Security, but also brings to light a theme widely defended by the left: the campaign to disarm the population. “Demonizing guns and shooting clubs has a direct impact on the increase in violence”, she says.

Zanatta states that, in Santa Catarina, 43% of femicide victims were killed with bladed weapons. “If they had been able to defend themselves, if they had been armed, if the federal government had not made the possibility of self-defense so difficult, they could have avoided their deaths.”

Support and prevention actions

On March 8 of this year, during celebrations of International Women’s Day, the federal government announced a series of measures to combat gender-based violence, including the “retread” of a program launched in 2013, “Woman, Living Without Violence”, through which the “Casa da Mulher Brasileira” units are implemented, in addition to the Women’s Service Center, the 180 dial.

Clicie evaluates the initiatives as positive. “The current government is using a multidisciplinary front, applying the Maria da Penha Law in a transversal way – the woman suffers violence and receives legal, psychological support, a support network and reception”.

However, despite being positive, the initiative still has many flaws, such as a lack of professionals to deal with the large number of processes and low availability of police forces to ensure that protective measures are complied with.

Another point highlighted by Clicie is an attempt to map social projects that the Ministry of Women is carrying out throughout Brazil to create a large database. “Policies for women are like any other public policies. We have to have planning, execution, funding and a strong desire to integrate the various scenarios and problems”, she says.

When contacted for this report on the results of the actions implemented during the 11 months of the Lula government, the Ministry of Women had not commented at the time of writing this report.

Use of ankle bracelet, defended by minister, is questioned in study

In a hearing at the Human Rights Commission of the Federal Senate, held on Tuesday (21), the Minister of Women, Cida Gonçalves, stated that there is no need to increase the penalty for committing violence against women, but there must be a trial and punishment, as reported by Agência Senado. To this end, she defends the use of electronic ankle bracelets by men who commit violence against women.

The FBSP survey itself, however, questions this measure and states that, given the results presented in the document, there are reservations regarding the increasingly frequent use of the “budget aimed at combating violence against women to expand projects to monitor aggressors through electronic ankle bracelets”.

According to Congresswoman Zanatta, the gender equality agenda ends up being touted to gain votes in the elections, but in fact, with the exception of the first lady, Rosângela Silva, known as Janja, “women never had any strength in the Lula government”. “Three women were fired to accommodate Centrão men (Ana Moser, Daniela Carneiro, Rita Serrano) and we had a deafening silence from feminists, who are instrumentalized and do not have the coherence to criticize Lula.”