Access to justice for children and/or adolescents survivors of intra-family sexual abuse and for mothers in this context: Quantitative jurisprudential analysis of decisions of the São Paulo State Court of Justice between 2000 and 2020

Abstract

This research project seeks to analyze the (in)accessibility to justice for children, adolescents and mothers who seek the Judiciary in cases of domestic child/youth sexual abuse. The academic literature on sexual violence against children and adolescents reveals the Judiciary'slowness as the main obstacle to the protection of this group. In light of this finding, the work will seek to investigate how the São Paulo State Court of Justice has judged child and youth sexual abuse between 2000 and 2020, by analyzing which (extra)procedural acts prolong the proceedings. Therefore, we determined as a general objective the analysis of the decisions of the Court of Justice and first-degree judges of the State of São Paulo on intrafamily child and youth sexual abuse between 2000 and 2020, considering the impacts of parallel issues indicated in the literature as relevant to the analysis. As specific objectives we propose to i) categorize the judicial decisions collected according to variables pointed out in the literature as prolongations this type of process; ii) map the participation of the Judiciary in protecting the sexual dignity of children and/or adolescents and the rights of mothers in this context; iii) produce inferences from the literature review and the normative framework on the rights of children, adolescents and women. The methodology adopted will be the empirical study by content analysis to be carried out in four stages: literture review, presentation of the theoretical framework, preliminary study and quantitative juridical analysis. We hope that the results can provide support to contribute to the field of research and protection of the rights of children/adolescents and women in situations of violence.