Analysis of the Iranian Legal Approach to Protecting the Psychological Well-Being of Wives in the Family Environment
Keywords:
mental health, sexual violence, violence, family, threat, humiliation, insultAbstract
Violence against women's psychological well-being is one of the most significant forms of domestic violence, leading to long-term psychological consequences. Accordingly, the present article aims to analyze the Iranian legal approach to protecting the psychological well-being of wives in the family environment. This study is descriptive-analytical and employs a library research method. Instances such as verbal abuse and accusations of sexual infidelity, humiliation and insult, threats, authoritarian commands accompanied by humiliation, and female genital mutilation are among the behaviors that Iranian criminal law has criminalized to protect the psychological well-being of wives within the family environment. Criminal law has provided protection against certain offenses affecting the psychological well-being of wives; however, the absence of criminalization of marital sexual violence by husbands against their wives constitutes a legal gap in Iran’s criminal laws, particularly the Family Protection Law enacted in 2012. If the legislator’s objective in defining criminal provisions and offenses against wives in the Family Protection Law was to offer better and differential criminal protection for wives, then such conduct should have also been criminalized. Furthermore, since the burden of proof for offenses such as verbal abuse, accusations of sexual infidelity, humiliation, and insult rests on the wife, and given that such offenses do not leave permanent physical evidence, proving them presents a fundamental challenge.
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