The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence victim’s access to justice in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article presents barriers faced by the victims of domestic violence on accessing justice during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Periodic meetings of representatives from the institutions that make up the justice system were coded by the grounded theory and the situational analysis methodology. Coding made possible mapping the barriers to access to justice that are not visible in quantitative research that uses the databases of official bodies as a source, since the cases exposed in the meetings and systematized in the research refer to women who did not obtain access to justice for several reasons. As a result, it was observed that the articulation of two or more markers of gender, race, age, existence of physical disability or digital exclusion were crucial to mitigate access to justice in a period of health emergency, social isolation, food insecurity, unemployment and the resulting increase in tension in homes. There was a lack of a gender perspective in public policies during the health emergency. Institutional responses to obstacles proposed by them on the health emergency can be useful to expand access to justice in ordinary periods.