Beating a girl with an electrical cord and shaving her head is a father's right, judge points out.

Judge Leandro Bittencourt Cano, of a court specializing in violence against women in São Paulo, decided to acquit a father who beat his 13-year-old daughter with electrical wires and then cut her hair to prevent her from leaving the house. All this after discovering that the girl had lost her virginity to her boyfriend. The judge's argument in Guarulhos is that the father only wanted to apply a "corrective measure" to the girl, something that falls under the "right of correction."

September 16, 2017, 09:50 PMUpdated May 28, 2019, 09:34 AM

Judge Leandro Bittencourt Cano, from a court specializing in violence against women in São Paulo, decided to acquit a father who beat his 13-year-old daughter with electrical wires and then cut her hair to prevent her from leaving the house. All this after discovering that the girl had lost her virginity to her boyfriend. The judge's argument from Guarulhos is that the father only wanted to apply a "corrective measure" to the girl, something that falls under the "right of correction" (Photo: Leonardo Attuch).

GGN newspaper - Judge Leandro Bittencourt Cano, from a court specializing in violence against women in São Paulo, decided to acquit a father who beat his 13-year-old daughter with electrical wires and then cut her hair to prevent her from leaving the house. All this after discovering that the girl had lost her virginity to her boyfriend. The judge's argument in Guarulhos is that the father only wanted to apply a "corrective measure" to the girl, something that falls under the "right of correction."

In the decision, published by Conjur this Friday (15), the judge also says that the blows with the electric wire - which left marks of more than 20 cm on the girl's back - were given with "moderation". And the haircut, in fact, was an attempt to "protect" the girl from her school friends and gossip.

The jurist Pedro Serrano classified the judge's understanding as medieval. "To beat a young woman with an electric wire because she lost her virginity to her boyfriend, under the argument that such an act falls within the paternal prerogative of correction, is medieval. Without going into the merits of whether the defendant should be acquitted—I don't know the case well enough—the reasoning is medieval." (Read more below)

Beating daughter with electrical cord is a "corrective measure," says judge in Guarulhos.

From Conjur

Using an electrical cord to beat his 13-year-old daughter because she lost her virginity to her boyfriend is "merely an exercise of the right to discipline." This was the understanding of Judge Leandro Jorge Bittencourt Cano, of the Domestic and Family Violence Court against Women in Guarulhos (SP), in acquitting the girl's father. The Public Prosecutor's Office will appeal the decision, which it considered absurd.

“The officer moderately applied physical correction to his daughter, resulting in a minor injury. The incident was isolated and, according to the victim and the witness, the defendant's intention was to correct her,” the magistrate wrote.

According to him, the defendant cannot be convicted of bodily harm because intent in the conduct was not proven. "In fact, the father's real intention was only to correct his daughter."

According to the complaint filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office of São Paulo, the man beat the girl after discovering that she was in a serious relationship with a boy and that she had lost her virginity to him. The beating, with a wire, left eight lesions on the girl's back, some up to 22 cm long. Her father also cut her hair.

According to Leandro Cano, all of this demonstrates the father's intention to correct his daughter's behavior, not to hurt her. In the magistrate's understanding, the father cut the girl's hair because he was worried about the repercussions of the news of her losing her virginity at school, as a way to prevent her from leaving home.

"It is important to emphasize that corrective or disciplinary measures, when they do not exceed the limits granted by law, are considered lawful, as they constitute the regular exercise of a right."