Domestic violence in Brazil

Domestic violence in Brazil involves any type of violence or abuse by intimate partners or family members against one another. The majority of domestic violence cases in Brazil are performed by the man against their female partners.^[1] In 2015, the government released a study that showed that every seven minutes a woman was a victim of domestic violence in Brazil,^[2] over 70% of the Brazilian female population will suffer some kind of violence throughout their lifetime and 1 in every 4 women reports being a victim of psychological or physical violence.^[3] In 2017, Brazil had an estimate of 606 cases of violence and 164 cases of rape per day, over 60 thousand cases throughout the year. It is also estimated that only 10% of the cases are registered to the police. Although Brazil acknowledged that domestic violence was a problem in the 1940s, the Government has only acted upon it from 1980s onwards, with the creation of the Women Police Stations (Delegacia da Mulher) and later in 2006, with the publication of the Domestic Violence law.

Domestic violence is legally defined in Article 5 of the Domestic Violence Law of 2006 as "any action or omission of action motivated by gender that results in death, lesion, physical, sexual or psychological suffering, moral or patrimonial hazard".^[4] Although the legal definition is explained extensively in the law, the identification of domestic violence is a responsibility of the victims or closer relatives.