Vítimas e sentinelas: como os conselheiros tutelares concebem a violência doméstica contra crianças e adolescentes

Abstract

Domestic Violence against Children and Adolescents (DVCA) is a pervasive and widespread social phenomenon. Episodes and cases of DVCA should be referred to the Tutelary Council, which has the role of protecting and defending the rights of children and adolescents. Besides presenting a overview of the history of childhood and adolescence in its relations with violence, this study investigated the social representations about DVCA of a group of tutelary counselors operating in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. For this, the study relied on (a) the Theory of Social Representations, as proposed by Abric (1993), to understand the phenomenon, (b) the semistructured interview for data collection and (c) content analysis for the analysis of this data. It has been found that the social representations of councilors adjust peripherally to the most recent legal innovations in Brazil, while preserving their central elements coherent with earlier conceptions of DVCA. It was found that this dichotomy promotes frequent contradiction and ambiguity of attitudes towards physical violence: in most of the speeches, there was a cleavage between "light" violence, perceived as acceptable, and "harmful" violence, perceived as unacceptable. This suggests that the social representations of tutelary counselors about DVCA are in the phase of "resistance to transformation". Finally, the research concluded that although participant counselors admit the Doctrine of Integral Protection as a working tool, the overwhelming majority aligns themselves, at a more central level, with the Doctrine of Irregular Situation.