Abstract
This article aims to understand the workings of multidisciplinary teams in Domestic Violence Courts in Brazil. We seek to identify and understand the possible changes developed in these specialised spaces, which now exist for over a decade, that are turned to new responses capable of challenging the traditional way of doing things in the country’s Criminal Justice System. For that purpose and based on empirical research carried out in seven Brazilian capital cities, we will highlight some of the reflections extracted from focus groups carried out with the aforementioned multidisciplinary teams, as well as draw on the perceptions extracted from interviews with magistrates who work with domestic violence and victims of this type of conflict. In the end, we highlight the need for recognition of the importance of multidisciplinary teams when searching for new “ways out” in the domestic violence against women arena, as well as the need to see/admit the rigid borders of our “legal world”.
Keywords:
Domestic Violence against Women; Multidisciplinary Teams; The Maria da Penha Act (Brazil’s Domestic Violence Law)