"A justiça penal não se realiza a qualquer preço": etnografia de processos envolvendo estupro de vulnerável no RN

Abstract

The research aims to conduct an ethnography of criminal lawsuits of rape of vulnerable people and highlight the semantic slippage that term gets depending on what actors are involved and particular empirical contexts. The ethnographic material was obtained in the 2nd Court of Childhood and Youth, located in the Desembargador Miguel Seabra Forum, in Natal-RN, and deals with cases of rape of vulnerable, especially involving women under the age of 14 years. In general, it intends to anthropologically interpret those court lawsuits and highlight the relationship between law, morality and specific legal sensitivities in the sentencing process by judges in those cases. In seeking to understand the context from which these events are evoked and their symbolic dimension, the analysis allows to show how, in a supposedly neutral legal environment, moral questions about the construction of female identity (such as the idea of virginity, family and gender) gain relevance and materiality in the recognition of rights.