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.