Dragging your wife by the neck in the street is not considered domestic violence, according to a Portuguese female judge

YES, you read that right! Dragging your wife down the street by her neck is not considered domestic violence in Portugal, because according to a Portuguese female judge – yes, you read that right again – it is not a sufficiently cruel and humiliating act to be considered domestic violence. The Portuguese are very mean and callous people in general (if we’ve lived there long enough to realize that), but it seems that women in Portugal can be even more vicious when it comes to how they treat other women.

Especially in a case of domestic violence, you’d expect a woman to be the first to be compassionate towards another female victim, but since we’re talking about Portuguese people… It’s all explained. Anyway, it is clear that this is an extremely serious issue for any decent human being, regardless of gender.

It is no coincidence that Portuguese society seems to have never left the Stone Age in too many aspects. This court ruling has really cleared up all my doubts.

The following article is a translation (mostly MT). You can find the link to the original website at the end of it.


Domestic violence. Female judge acquits man who dragged wife by her neck

Woman was grabbed by the neck and dragged to the car. She never testified.

Paredes court finds aggression proven, but the act was not “cruelty” enough to be domestic violence.

It was not the first episode to involve the police. This time, the 37-year-old man grabbed his partner by the neck and forced her into a car. The episode occurred last October, in Paredes, and a GNR patrol that was passing by witnessed everything:

the woman being grabbed, being lifted from the ground and then being dragged by the neck into a vehicle.

Although the facts were proven by the Paredes court, judge Isabel Pereira Neto considered that there was not enough cruelty for the act to be considered domestic violence. The victim did not testify or file a complaint, and the man was acquitted. The news is provided by Jornal de Notícias (content for subscribers).

According to that newspaper, also in November 2019, the GNR was called to the victim’s house during the night. The woman was near the house, in heavy rain, and needed the protection of the GNR to be able to enter the house and remove some objects from her and her children, as she was going to seek shelter at a family member’s house. However, the couple would end up rekindling their relationship.

In view of the most recent facts, which date back to last October, the man was accused by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of one crime of domestic violence and three of threats to the GNR soldiers who detained him. The defendant did not attend any of the court sessions, writes JN, ending up acquitted of all crimes at the end of April. Although the acts were serious enough to constitute a crime against physical integrity, without a complaint from the victim to go to trial — who refused to testify — the attacker ended up free.

In the sentence, to which Jornal de Notícias had access, judge Isabel Pereira Neto says that “it was proven” that the woman “was grabbed by the neck, by the defendant, her partner, who, using violence, tried to introduce her into the vehicle”

Despite this, the judge considers that it was “just an act, which does not have the inherent gravity” of the crime of domestic violence.“ We understand that the defendant’s conduct does not fall within the concept of ill-treatment, provided for in article 152 of the Penal Code”,

based on the thesis that the act did not have sufficient “cruelty, insensitivity and contempt” to be considered crime of domestic violence.

Isabel Pereira Neto argues that aggression meets the requirements of the crime of harming physical integrity, but, as it is a semi-public crime, it depends on a formal complaint from the victim — which never happened. As for the threats made to GNR soldiers, the judge considered it “an outburst”. Although when he was arrested and taken to the Guard post, the man said that he wanted the name of the GNR to go look for them, the magistrate understood that he never wanted to “kill them or even beat them”.


Subscribe
Notify of

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments