Domestic abuse victims should be able to receive support the moment they enter a police station, with advocates calling for a specialised unit to handle such cases.
The unit should bring together the police, healthcare professionals, social workers and victims’ rights lawyers, a spokeswoman for Survival of Abuse with Resilience, a service offered by the St Jeanne Antide Foundation, said yesterday.
She was reacting to the news that the government was considering changes to the law, including temporary eviction orders to have perpetrators removed from the family home within 12 hours of an abuse report being filed. SOAR welcomed the wide-ranging legal changes being proposed to deal with gender-based violence and domestic abuse.
The changes are an obligation that emanate from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, which Malta ratified in 2014. The convention deals with violence and domestic abuse and the changes are being piloted by the Civil Liberties Ministry.
SOAR said one of the recommendations made last year at the end of a national conference that heard survivors of domestic violence was a specialised response team.
Victims often complain about the way they are treated at police stations and health clinics, not knowing what their rights are. Campaigners argue that a high number of domestic violence victims experience secondary trauma when lodging a police report as a result of lack of empathy and trust. The conference proposed the creation of an on-call multidisciplinary team to immediately assist victims while lodging a police report and attending a health centre if needed. This team would also be able to carry out a risk assessment of the victim, which, under the proposed changes, is crucial for a magistrate to order the immediate eviction of the perpetrator from the family home.
The SOAR spokeswoman said this team would be the “first responders” when a victim reached out or wanted to file a report about domestic violence. The service should be accompanied by adequate physical locations where reports could be made in “a comfortable and private space”, which was often not the case today, she added.
“This will be a solution to the many complaints that survivors have about the humiliating process of reporting, and it provides the needed solutions to a survivor at first contact with support and protection services. No more badly written reports, no more victim-blaming accusations, no more discouraging a victim from reporting and issuing police report waiver forms and less confusion about one’s rights when attempting to place a report.”
Apart from the legal changes, the Civil Liberties Ministry wants to draw up standard operating procedures that provide guidelines on how the various agencies, including the police and social workers, would work together when handling a report on domestic violence.
kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com