Children Abuse: The Credibility of the Victim's Testimony in the Brazilian Justice

Abstract

This text discusses the care of children and adolescents victims of sexual abuse and the credibility of its narrative in justice institutions. Documentary analysis was carried out in seventy-nine cases sentenced in the Special Court for Children and Adolescents of the city of Belém in the year of 2017. The main findings of the survey indicate the existence of a controversy in relation to the credibility of the testimony of children victims of abuse, the positive and negative aspects of the practice of professionals responsible for mediating the collection of such statements and the precariousness of technical instruments and the human material placed at the disposal of justice, whose shortage directly impacts on the final result of the judgments, generating impunity and new victimization of children. ISSN 2220-8488 (Print), 2221 ©Center for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 109The discussion we propose is organized into three topics: at first, we present arguments harvested in the international debate about the credibility of the children's testimony; in the second, we show the main differences between the strategy adopted in Brazil for the collection of this kind of testimony and the form as it occurs in other countries; third, we present a panorama of the testimonies of children in the Special Court for Children and Adolescents in the judicial district of Belém city.