Domestic Violence against children in Portugal - a faceless crime?

• In Event: Gender, Crime and Justice Working Group Panel 10: Family Violence: experiences, assessments and interventions

Abstract

Domestic violence has been in the Portuguese State’s agenda as a priority in terms of prevention and repression. It is a fairly democratic and non-discriminatory crime, because it affects victims of all ages, genders and status, as we have seen in the statistcs that have been made public in the last decade. Regardless of this, one cannot be indifferent of the severity of this crime and the effects it has upon its most vulnerable victims – children.
The family (protected by the Portuguese Constitution as an institution) can be a place of maltreatment and domestic abuse. Gelles and Strauss concluded that “you are more likely to be physically assaulted, beaten, and killed in your own home at the hands of a loved one than anyplace else, or by anyone else in our society” and for many children the household is not a place of comfort and love, but of pain and hatred.
The legal framework has shifted over the years, yet society still accepts physical punishment as an educational method. We do not share this understanding, sanctioning a zero tolerance policy against corporal punishment.
Domestic violence against children should not be taken lightly, however sentencing in Portugal has not yet shifted to consider this type of behaviour as violent crime due to the penal framework. We are not stating that prison is the solution, not only because it may not be accompanied by educational measures for the defendant, but also because it can have several undesired side effects, namely within the family.
To undergo this paper, we have reviewed national and international literature, statistics and also sentencing from Portuguese Courts of appeal and have come to the conclusion that we still have a long way to go until society is appropriately educated to exclude all shapes and forms of violence against children.

Authors

• Sara Leitão Moreira, Coimbra Business School

• Guilherme Leitão Loureiro, UMAIA: Universidade da Maia