With harsh punishments for the aggressors, Law 14.344/22, the Henry Borel Law, was sanctioned without vetoes by President Jair Bolsonaro. The norm establishes specific protective measures for children and adolescents who are victims of domestic and family violence and considers the murder of children under 14 a heinous crime. The text was published in Official Diary of the Union (DO) this Wednesday (25). 
Inspired by points of the Maria da Penha Law, the Henry Borel Law also establishes that crimes committed against children and adolescents, regardless of the penalty provided, “the rules valid in special courts cannot be applied”. basic food basket or fine in isolation.
In cases where there is an imminent risk to the victim’s life or integrity, the aggressor must be immediately removed from the home or place of coexistence. At any stage of the police investigation or criminal investigation, the aggressor may be held in preventive detention, but the judge may revoke it if there is no reason to maintain it.
Qualified murder
Another point of the new law amends the Penal Code to consider homicide against a minor under 14 years of age as a qualified type with a penalty of imprisonment from 12 to 30 years, increased from 1/3 to half if the victim is a person with a disability or has a disease that implies increasing their vulnerability.
The increase will be up to two thirds if the perpetrator is the victim’s ascendant, stepfather or stepmother, uncle, brother, spouse, partner, guardian, curator, tutor or employer, or in any other capacity has authority over the victim.
denunciations
According to the law, anyone who has knowledge of violence against children and adolescents or witnesses it has a duty to report the violence, either through Dial 100 of the National Human Rights Ombudsman, or to the guardianship council or to the police authority. Anyone who fails to do so can also be sentenced. In this case, the penalty of detention of six months to three years, increased by half, if this omission results in bodily harm of a serious nature, and tripled, if it results in death. On the other hand, the law requires measures and actions to protect and compensate the person who reports this type of crime.
Case
According to the rapporteur Carmen Zanotto, “the Brazilian Parliament recognized the pain of all fathers, mothers and family members who have a child brutally removed from their lives”. The Henry Borel case had great national commotion.
The 4-year-old boy was killed in 2021 by internal bleeding after beatings in the apartment where he lived with his mother and stepfather, in Rio de Janeiro.
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Translated to english by RJ983
From Brazil, by EBC News
