Objective: This study, carried out based on examinations of battered women by the Clinical Forensic Service of the Afrânio Peixoto Medical-Legal Institute in the city of Rio de Janeiro, aims to characterize the nature of the injuries suffered by victims of domestic violence and to investigate the motivation of such events, the family situations in which they occur, the habits of victims and aggressors and the social milieu involved.
Method: A questionnaire was given to 1000 battered women attended by that service between October 2009 and March 2012, along with simultaneous quantification/classification of the injuries suffered.
Results: We found a prevalence of working women (63.
Physical and/or sexual abuse, negligence, and psychological abuse against children and adolescents, constitute a socially important syndrome, demanding preventive public policies and rules for its eradication. Sexual abuse, as a troublesome occurrence, or even its mere presumption, does not regularly undergo official notification. We have examined legal investigative registers at the Instituto Médico-Legal do Rio de Janeiro - Sede set up from January to March 2000, including women, children and adolescents, with medico-legal histories suggestive of sexual assault.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe authors evaluate the consequences of incomplete necroscopic examinations wherein it was impossible to apply radiological resources to locate firearm projectiles. The study includes 8185 reports from the Instituto Médico-Legal Afrânio Peixoto in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, representing the totality of corpses processed from January to December 2001; of these, 3122 were gunshot victims, 309 of which were buried with unremoved projectiles, being liable to future judicial reappraisal. During the same period, there were 23 exhumation requests by police authorities, 12 of them querying the existence of projectiles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF