A maior valoração probatória da palavra da vítima no crime de estupro de vulnerável: uma análise da atuação do Tribunal de Justiça do Maranhão entre os anos de 2019 e 2021

Abstract

Bearing in mind that sexual crimes against vulnerable people are generally committed in secret, in a family environment, making it difficult to generate material evidence and, consequently, making the statements of the offended party the main means of evidence in judicial records, this research has The objective is to analyze to what extent the Court of Justice of Maranhão values the testimony of the victim of the crime of rape of a vulnerable person based on jurisprudential analysis between 2019 and 2021. The research is based on the empirical assumption that the victim's testimony has low probative value, being, therefore, insufficient to sustain a criminal conviction, because of gender asymmetries, now limited to the female figure. It is qualitative-quantitative research, belonging to the legal-social aspect of legal research, based on inductive reasoning and combined with the research technique of data analysis. The proposed methodology made it possible to verify the theoretical and empirical elements of this study, contributing to the improvement of the Maranhão justice system itself, based on the purpose of this Postgraduate Program in Law and Institutions of the justice system at the Federal University of Maranhão. It was found that, given the complexity involved in the crime of rape against vulnerable people, the biggest challenge lies in the difficulties of the various judicial actors in understanding their speech and valuing it as evidence, thus sustaining a conviction.