Legal Literacy - Proving cases of severe abuse using a visum et repertum, the role, and purpose of forensic medicine in an effort to prove material truth.

Definition of the Crime of Abuse

Andi Hamzah provides an opinion regarding the definition of abuse, namely an action that causes injury or wounds to a person's body. Abuse can be carried out in various ways, such as hitting, slapping, stabbing, kicking, hacking, and so on. Abuse in the Criminal Code consists of the following elements:

  1. Whoever;
  2. Deliberately abusing to damage health or desiring pain and injury to occur.

The crime of abuse is a phenomenon that is not easily eliminated in social life. Various modes and types of abuse occur, such as physical violence and beatings, resulting in injuries to the victim's limbs or body, and sometimes even causing the victim to experience lifelong physical disabilities, including death. In addition, the crime of abuse also often has psychological impacts or effects on the victim, such as threats, fear, trauma, and sometimes there are victims of abuse crimes who experience physical and mental disorders.

Visum et Repertum as Evidence in Criminal Cases

In cases of abuse, there are generally victims who die, but there are also survivors with injuries due to abuse. In addition to being a victim of abuse, the victim also acts as a patient, namely as someone who is a legal subject with all the demands of their rights and obligations. This means that a living victim is not entirely evidence, but can be presented in the form of a Visum et Repertum.

Visum et Repertum can be useful for proving a case based on criminal procedure law. A doctor, according to their profession, has an obligation to assist law enforcement officials in proving whether a victim is included in a criminal case or not, by examining the victim and then reporting it in the form of a letter called Visum et Repertum. In the case of victims who have injuries, a doctor is able to provide information related to the identity of the victim, the type of injury, the type of violence that caused the injury, to determining the degree of injury or qualification of the injury which will later be stated in the Visum et Repertum. Therefore, it can be used as evidence that can convince the judge to decide a case.

Visum et Repertum in the form of forensic expert examination results tells about criminal events that can become evidence in further investigations. For the court, the judge's freedom is still guaranteed by law, where the judge is not obliged to follow the expert's opinion if it contradicts their beliefs. However, the expert doctor's statement in the Visum et Repertum is made based on objectivity and the results are very close to the truth.