Brazil domestic violence law turns 20 as Supreme Court weighs broader reach

RIO DE JANEIRO (CN) — Brazil’s main law against domestic violence turns 20 Friday as the country’s Supreme Court considers whether its protective orders can also be issued in cases of gender-based violence outside the domestic, family or intimate relationships listed in the statute.Brazil enacted the Maria da Penha Law on Aug. 7, 2006, recognizing domestic and family violence against women as a human rights violation, defining forms of abuse, authorizing emergency protective orders and establishing measures to prevent violence, support victims and hold offenders accountable. It’s named after Brazilian pharmacist Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes, who was shot by her husband while she slept, leaving her paraplegic. Months later, he attempted to electrocute her in the shower.After years of delays in Brazil’s courts, human rights organizations brought her case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In 2001, the commission found Brazil responsible for negligence, inaction and tolerance of domestic violence, prompting reforms to the country’s laws protecting women.The case now before the Supreme Court involves a woman who sought a protective order against a man she accused of stalking her, demanding a relationship and threatening to kill her if she refused. The two had never been in a domestic, family or intimate relationship.The cour denied her request, finding the Maria da Penha Law did not apply, and transferred the case to a special criminal court for minor offenses. The state’s Public Prosecutor’s Office appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.The court heard arguments May 7. The case returned to the docket when the court resumed sessions Aug. 3, but as of Friday, no justice had voted.“We did not have a domestic violence law. We came from a culture that trivialized domestic violence,” Leila Linhares Barsted, a lawyer and member of the coalition of feminist organizations that drafted the proposal that became the law, said. “That became embedded in the culture and also in the minds of judges and police officers.”In the late 1970s, Brazil’s feminist movement drew attention to cases in which men accused of killing their wives or partners were acquitted under the so-called defense of honor. Though not recognized in law, defense attorneys used the argument to portray the killings as justified responses to the victim’s conduct. The Supreme Court declared the defense unconstitutional in 2021.Brazil’s 1988 Constitution required the state to create mechanisms to curb violence in families. In 1993, the U.N. World Conference on Human Rights recognized women’s rights as human rights, and the following year the Organization of American States adopted the Convention of Belém do Pará, requiring member states to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women.In 1995, Brazil created special criminal courts to hear minor offenses. Domestic violence cases were routed to those courts, where they could end in mediation or orders requiring offenders to donate staple foods.Barsted said more than 70% of the cases before those courts involved domestic violence. Women seeking help were pressured to reconcile with their abusers and often left without an effective legal response, she said.The commission’s findings increased pressure for legislative reform. In 2002, six feminist organizations formed a coalition to draft comprehensive domestic violence legislation. The government submitted the bill to Congress in 2004, and it became law two years later.The law removed domestic violence cases from the jurisdiction of the special criminal courts, barred penalties such as donations of staple foods, created specialized courts, guaranteed legal assistance for survivors and allowed a single court to decide both criminal and family law matters.Protective orders can require an abuser to leave the home, prohibit contact with or proximity to the victim and suspend firearm possession or carry permits before a criminal conviction. Brazilian courts issued 621,202 protective orders in 2025, an average of 70 per hour, according to the National Council of Justice.“Protective orders are the heart of the Maria da Penha Law. They are preventive measures that interrupt the escalation of violence,” Silvia Chakian, a prosecutor who coordinates the São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office unit that assists victims of violence and its women’s ombuds office, said.Barsted said one of the law’s main transformations took place outside the courts. “People may not know the text of the law, but everyone knows there is a Maria da Penha Law and that you cannot hit a woman,” Barsted said. “It changed the understanding of domestic violence.”Other laws expanded Brazil’s criminal response to violence against women over the next two decades. The country added femicide, the gender-based killing of a woman, to the penal code in 2015 and made it a standalone offense in 2024. It also criminalized sexual harassment, stalking and psychological violence.Yet the numbers underscore the limits of those reforms. Brazil recorded 1,571 femicides in 2025, the highest total on record and a 4% increase from the previous year, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. Current or former partners accounted for nearly 80% of identified perpetrators.Justice and Public Security Ministry Sinesp panel data, updated Thursday, show Brazil recorded another 730 femicides from January through June 2026, an average of four a day. That was down 3.8% from the same period in 2025.Violating a protective order can indicate a risk of femicide because it shows that the abuser has begun to defy the justice system as well, Chakian said.Chakian said the protection network envisioned by the Maria da Penha Law remains inadequate, particularly in regions with fewer specialized police stations, referral hospitals and service centers. She added that monitoring of protective orders, coordination among institutions, investment in prevention and programs to rehabilitate and reeducate abusers also remain insufficient.Chakian said preventing violence also requires investment in education, social assistance, housing and employment.“Sometimes, the focus on creating new criminal offenses and increasing penalties masks the lack of investment in public policies that federal, state and municipal governments are responsible for implementing,” Chakian said.The Supreme Court case adds another question about the limits of the legal response: how to protect women subjected to gender-based violence outside domestic, family or intimate relationships. The dispute is whether the Maria da Penha Law or a different legal instrument should fill that gap.“There is still a dispute over what constitutes gender-based violence,” said Carmen Hein de Campos, a lawyer and member of the coalition that drafted the proposal.Campos said gender-based violence can occur outside domestic, family or intimate relationships, but she opposed expanding the Maria da Penha Law. “What we should consider is a different law, a broader law on gender-based violence that could cover all the other situations outside the Maria da Penha Law,” Campos said.Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office, which represents the federal government before the Supreme Court, also supports keeping the Maria da Penha Law limited to domestic, family and intimate relationships. In a written response to Courthouse News, the office said those cases involve specific dynamics, including emotional and financial dependence, continued contact, children together and recurring cycles of violence.“Extending the Maria da Penha Law to all forms of gender-based violence could compromise the specialized service network built over the years to address domestic and family violence,” the office said. It added that similar protections for women facing violence in other settings could be created through separate legislation and that existing criminal and civil laws already provide other forms of protection.The Minas Gerais Public Prosecutor’s Office argues this interpretation leaves women without protection when they face stalking, threats or harassment by strangers or others with whom they have no intimate relationship.Denise Guerzoni, who heads the office’s center supporting prosecutors handling domestic and family violence cases, said the appeal seeks only to extend access to protective orders, not to apply the entire law to every act of violence against women.The office argues the domestic, family and intimate relationships listed in Article 5 of the Maria da Penha Law are illustrative rather than exhaustive.“The central element is not the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, but the motivation for the violence,” Guerzoni said. “The determination will depend on evidence that the woman was subjected to violence precisely because she is a woman, through behavior that demonstrates, for example, control, stalking, objectification, discrimination, contempt or an attempt at subjugation.”Campos said that although the law helped name the problem, expand public debate and prompt the state to develop policies, it is not enough to change the culture that sustains violence.“Even though the Maria da Penha Law brought about a social understanding that this is unacceptable, the violence continues,” Campos said.Courthouse News reporter Marília Marasciulo is based in Brazil.Categories / InternationalSubscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads