The present thesis aimed to understand the perspective of criminal persecutors
on accused of “rape of the vulnerable”, since the crime of abuse of the vulnerable
is closely related to the violation of a taboo. It was possible to carry out 10 semistructured interviews with operators of the criminal legal system (two judges, two
district prosecutors, one state attorney, one delegate, one prison security agent
and three lawyers), despite 30 refusals, which already connotes the difficulty and
unavailability of speaking of a taboo topic. The means of formation of the legal
operator, the professional position, as well as their cultural sources constituted
important elements in the formation of the image that each operator kept of their
experiences in accompanying understand the vision of criminal persecutors
about people accused of rape of vulnerable once that the crime of abuse of the
vulnerable is closely related to the violation of a taboo. In the first chapters,
considerations were made on social values and taboos, on what the legal
literature has on the crime of abuse of the vulnerable, in order to enter the voices
of the countryside. From the narratives, it was possible to extract relevant
discussions regarding the way of conceiving and analyzing the crime considering
the gender variable of the abuser and the victim, the association of crime with the
expression of madness and unreason, the variation of punishment criteria, the
contagion that this crime causes and forms of exile. Finally, the limit of the right
before the taboo was discussed. The breach of the taboo norm produces the
dread of disruption, and only the legal response seems to be ineffective to
appease the effect of this transgression, which is why the penalty is considered
insufficient to atone for the seriousness of the crime.