Updated: Seminar hears calls for concerted action on domestic violence

(Adds comments of Home Affairs Minister)

A seminar to mark the international day on domestic violence this morning heard repeated calls for the various government agencies and NGOs to work efficiently together by adopting a holistic approach to the problem.

The seminar, appropriately titled 'Working together to combat domestic violence', was organised by the National Commission for Domestic Violence.

Social Policy Minister John Dalli, who kicked off proceedings, said this was a problem which Maltese society must not ignore He pointed out that the government agency Appogg last year handled 524 cases of domestic violence. Reports made to the police rose by more than 50 percent in the two years after the new Domestic Violence Act was enacted. These figures, he said, showed the seriousness of the problem and also the fact that more people were prepared to act when they suffered violence.

Mr Dalli stressed the importance of close liaison between the police, the various professions and aid agencies as well as court services to ensure that thosevictims who took the major step of reporting domestic violence found the help and support they needed to guide them – and their children – through their difficulties.

He said the government itself was considering ways how it could further help such people.

The keynote speaker at the seminar was Austrian Judge Sylvia Thaller, who insisted that domestic violence must be seen as being a public, rather than a private, matter. This, she said, was not a matter of a private dispute but a matter of public security. Domestic violence must not be belittled as being a family dispute, Its implications were far wider and needed to be recognised and treated as such.

Victims deserved to be treated with solidarity and compassion and they must not suffer further injustice. For example, it should be the aggressor who is made to leave the matrimonial home, not the victim.

She said action should be based on immediate and effective intervention, prohibition orders to protect the victims from repeat offences and counselling and support by aid agencies.

Closing the seminar, Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said that between January and October the police initiated criminal proceedings against 241 persons on offences relating to domestic violence.

He stressed the need for education and said that new and commendable initiatives, such as the 116 support numbers and their extensive advertisement, could prove instrumental.

But social support could also prove necessary especially true when the victim was financially dependent on the perpetrator.

The ministry, he said, was due to publish a White Paper on Restorative Justice, providing for victim-offender meditation and victim reparation on the part of the perpetrator.