Rekonstruksi Pembuktian Kekerasan Seksual Berbasis Relasi Kuasa untuk Memperkuat Perlindungan Hukum terhadap Korban

Abstract

Evidence assessment in sexual violence cases becomes particularly challenging when power relations between perpetrators and victims affect the victims’ ability to resist, report the violence, terminate the relationship, or provide consistent testimony. The problem concerns not only the types of admissible evidence but also how facts and victims’ conduct are interpreted within judicial reasoning. This study aims to examine how power relations affect the construction and assessment of evidence in sexual violence cases and to reconstruct evidentiary parameters that can strengthen legal protection for victims without compromising fair and rational standards of proof. This study employs a normative juridical method using case and gender approaches. Legal materials are analyzed by mapping evidentiary provisions, examining judicial reasoning, and identifying potential gender-based stereotypes in the assessment of victims’ testimony and conduct. The findings indicate that power relations may shape resistance, delayed reporting, continued communication or relationships with perpetrators, and the form and consistency of victims’ testimony. These circumstances should therefore not automatically be interpreted as undermining victim credibility without considering the relational structure, forms of control, threats, dependency, and the configuration of other supporting evidence. This study proposes a reconstruction of evidentiary parameters from a victim-credibility-centered approach toward a power-relation-sensitive assessment of evidence. The reconstruction positions power relations as an evidentiary context connecting the victim’s position, the perpetrator’s patterns of conduct, the victim’s responses, supporting evidence, and the fulfillment of criminal elements, while maintaining the applicable standard of proof and the rights of the accused.