“My dream, after dealing with this [do processo judicial], do not wake up. She [as duas filhas] are better off without me. They have the best dad in the world. I’m not really here to do anything. i just work. I’m not happy, I’m not happy. I want justice. I can’t die before. That’s why I live”.
– Is the end of the process not enough?
“It’s not enough for me, it’s not enough for me”.
– But she has two daughters, a husband…
[Um silêncio, uma respiração profunda].
“They look so good without me. I don’t have much more power, much more to give in this life. I’m exhausted. Enough”.
The dry, firm words, without any hesitation, are from Helena Santos Carvalho, 48, who was raped in July 2017 by “a renowned doctor” who was recently sentenced to five years in prison – the case is now before the Court of Appeal.
“I want to make my story public. I lost everything, I lost fearHelena, she prefers to be treated this way, she is determined. The loose, unabashed voice, rare only in a few moments, loses power.
“I was a healthy, capable person, with an excellent professional career, a competitive swimmer when I was young, an active life, married early at 20, had my daughters early and lost everything. I am permanently disabled for 79%. I live on drugs, on psychiatrists, I go to doctors, hospitals and come straight home.”
The description happens without pauses. In the next sentence, the words come out cadence, almost breathless: “I was the first to denounce, alone, all alone, mistreated, discredited, humiliated, stoned, I was almost killed, everything you can think of .”
Helena Santos Carvalho took – is the expression she uses – “two months to sue, without telling anyone. I didn’t want to believe what happened, I felt like “this isn’t going to happen, I’m going to destroy my life, I’m going to destroy my marriage””.
First she told a friend, then her gynecologist “who put her hands to her head and said: ‘Helena has to report it'”. Then to her parents, then to her husband, then to the PJ.
“He was shocked. Nuno was shocked. He understood why I took the car on those holidays and disappeared. He understood why I was apathetic, absent, why he couldn’t touch me. It was impossible, he couldn’t,” he says with a firm voice .
“I had two options: either do something or try to forget. And be that as it may, I tried to forget it. My concern was to focus on Helena and that she got the follow up she should have. I confess, my luck was that they weren’t my daughters”. Would he have gone looking for the doctor? “Don’t doubt”.
What Nuno heard was the description of what happened in July 2017 in the office of the “renowned doctor”, in the second consultation. Helena suspected nothing. The 70-year-old doctor was even known to his father. When the Internal Medicine doctor explained the exams to her – “lymphatic examination, examination of this and that … her by saying that “he was old enough to be my father”. And he even spoke of “doctor-patient secrecy and between patient and doctor”.
“He asked me to undress, listen to me. He went to look at my legs, do the palpation, my legs were swollen, and then he took off my panties. That hand went inside me, it hurt, it raped me with his hand. In and out… a shuttle, in and out, it didn’t stop. I took his hand, took him away… and left in a frenzy. I went to the bathroom, threw up. I left terrified. I got in the car. I stood still. I just cried. That happened and I had no response. I am very reactive and had no response. I just thought, “This didn’t happen to me, this didn’t happen to me”.”
The violation is reported calmly. Breathing is only briefly accelerated. Helena Santos Carvalho won in first instance in court, but don’t forget ‘entity’ [prefere por agora esta designação] who called her “liar, cunning, provocative, with an absolute lack of modesty”.
Five and a half years after the rape, the case came to court. “There were many hearings as more cases were discovered in the meantime, some with 10, 12 years old, another woman joined mine. The outcome of the relationship is missing, no more than a year I’m told”.
The couple’s life was suspended, everything changed. Nuno senses this “distance” which is “natural, Helena was withdrawn from everything. I’m here to take care of her whatever it takes”.
Helena speaks of “the flashes, the many flashes, at the slightest touch I have many flashes: the rapist’s look, the sob, the red face. And I can’t, I can’t”. And he returns to the original idea: “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t really feel like walking around here. Just close my chapters”.
Should the crime of rape be a public crime? “Absolutely, I have no doubt about that.”
divided socialists
The certainty of Helena Santos Carvalho, and of the 106,991 Portuguese who advocate a change in the law, divides the socialists in the parliamentary group and in the government, DN thought.
So says Cláudia Santos, Socialist deputy one cannot “instrumentalize” the victim, force him to go to a criminal trial, to medico-legal expertise, if he doesn’t want to. There can be no crime where the will of the victim is immaterial”.
The MEP’s assurance that “it is not her project, but that of the parliamentary group”, and thus unanimously, is opposed by several MEPs and even, in a less publicly visible way, by some members of the government.
Berta Nunes, deputy of the PS, speaks of a legislative incongruity that must be corrected: “What happens is that in the vast majority of cases, rape is already a public crime when it happens in the context of domestic violence, for example; it is a public crime when the person is institutionalized; it is public crime for minors. I have no idea that if a 16 year old girl is raped the crime is public but if she is 18 years old it is not because you want to protect the victim’s self determination”.
“There are people in my group who share my view that we must go further and protect these victims more and succeed in punishing the perpetrators.” And the vote tomorrow? “It is a situation that has not yet been defined. A reflection is taking place. In my case and in that of other deputies, we have this opinion”.
Miguel Costa Matos, deputy and leader of the JS, who having defended “for many years” that rape is a “public crime with the necessary guarantees to protect the victim”, and emphasizing the importance of the petition, he has no doubts: “I will vote according to my conscience. “
Elza Pais, leader of the socialist women, considers “it is absurd to think that we better protect the victims by not punishing the aggressors. And we must not forget that while the crime may be public in nature, the trials may not be public. This does not mean that the privacy and intimacy of the victim are not properly safeguarded during the criminal process.”
And there is one “discomfort” in government after Justice Minister Catarina Sarmento e Castro publicly expressed “personal opinion” saying that “while there may be improvements in the legislative part, [o crime de violação de adultos] should depend on the complaint”.
“It was as if the government as a whole was against it, when it is not. It would have been better not to make any statementsa Socialist source tells DN.
Another source reports the “discomfort” of the Deputy Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Ana Catarina Mendes, who also has custody in this area, and will not have been heard in this matter, unlike Catarina Sarmento e Castro, because “there is a established position is, in force, of being against public crime”.
“There is clear and growing support in the multi-MP parliamentary group for change. PS has already evolved in IVG, in gay marriage, why shouldn’t it evolve in such an important issue?”says the same source.
However, it is expected that after Friday’s vote, the petition of 107,000 people will not be ignored and that a broad public debate on the issue will then be opened.
The “impermissible”
Dulce Rocha, attorney, chair of the Child Support Institute, questions the incongruity of the current legal system and argues that the law “really” needs to change.
And the explanation, part of it, lies in these two questions: “If the rape is spousal, it’s a public crime, if not, isn’t it? This is not acceptable. A woman arrives at the hospital, all torn up, crumpled up, and says she was raped, aren’t the doctors allowed to collect evidence? Can’t you do anything? It’s absolutely anachronistic.”.
Another anachronism, explains the former prosecutor, is the fact that, from the countries of the Council of Europe, “only we, Portugal and San Marino are the ones who continue this old, ancestral, discriminatory and patriarchal idea of demanding complaints from women. The French and Spanish have changed recently.”
Teresa Pizarro Beleza, Professor of Law, PhD in Gender Studies, who says so It’s time people realized that shame should be on the side of the aggressor and not the side of the victim”, contradicts the statement that current legislation already allows the intervention of the Member of Parliament without complaint from the victim [referência ao pressuposto no n.º 2 do artigo 178.º do Código Penal] “when the interests of the victim so require”.
“It’s an unfortunate compromise solution – because it’s not just about the victim’s best interests (if that were the case, then criminal law shouldn’t intervene). But also and above all because it does not explain the paradox that rape is public if the victim is a child (“minor”, in legal parlance) or if there is domestic violencehe says.
Source: DN
