Prosecution of violence against women: medico-legal and criminal aspects

Abstract

The main objective of this poster is to analyze different aspects the prosecution of violence against women. As part of this task we examine the victim´s testimony overall role as well as the incidence of alcohol abuse. Different studies have found an escalation of violence after separation or divorce. Another goal of the study is to validate this thesis by assessing the characteristics of the relationship between aggressors and victims. The poster also attempts to measure the prevalence of recidivism and to answer the question whether the lack of medico-legal documentation is ever a problem in prosecuting gendered violence, by examining the quality and extension of the information provided by the injuries medical report included in the files. The data used comes from the Files classified as Gender Violence from the Prosecutor office of Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, NW Spain). A descriptive statistical analysis was carried out with the statistical package SPSS.