the story of human rights violations

1. Sexuality and
Justice
Life Story: Human rights of women
Bianca Maçãs and Carolina Cordeiro
EB de Santa Catarina - Agr. Escolas Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro

2. Contents
• We will talk about:
• A life story of a fifty-year-old woman that we will call Mary (not her real
name).
• The consequences in her life .
• The opinion of the public company.

3. Introduction
 Women's rights are still disregarded by the Portuguese Justice.
 The delay of 19 years for justice to a woman who was sacrificed in her life.
 The capacity to learn, from this case, that women should not be hurt in their
body and feelings.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all
men and women are created equal.” - Elizabeth
Cady Stanton (defender of women's rights).

4. Chronology of events
On 22nd May 1995, Maria who was 50, was submitted to a surgery in the
vaginal area to remove two glands that caused her serious and continuous
infections.
In this surgery there was an error because the doctors cut her a vital nerve.

5. Consequences on the
victim's life
This lady has suffered from urinary and fecal incontinence, therefore she had
to wear diapers and she couldn’t have sex with her husband because she
lost her sensitivity in the genital area.

6. Indemnity
Mary brought the criminal proceedings against the hospital and the sentence
was: the hospital should pay her an indemnity of 175 000 000 euros to
support all the damages caused by this medical error.

7. Hospital appeals in court
The hospital appealed against the sentence in order to decrease the amount
of the indemnity and to delay the solution of this case.

8. Disability
The patient stopped working because she was considered disable due to the
problems she was living. Now she is 69 years old and her husband has
already died. She survives with a 200 euros pension.

9. Time for Justice
The Court took 19 years to make a decision on the indemnity. Only on 9th
October 2014 the case was solved. In the meanwhile, Mary appealed to the
European Court of Human Rights due to the delay of the Court response.

10. Opinion of the society
A Portuguese Women Association protested against the late decision from
the Court and they claimed that the women’s fundamental sexual and
reproductive rights are protected by the Constitution and by the International
Rights.

11. Conclusion
We can conclude that:
• Women’s rights must be respected.
•The Portuguese justice is very slow.
•There is discrimination towards women.
•Sensitivity is needed to talk about women’s sexuality and rights .