THE Domestic Violence Centre yesterday confirmed more victims of domestic violence had started speaking out and asking for help, although current records in no way mirrored the reality of the situation.
“There is an increase in the number of domestic violence reports, indicating not so much an increasing tendency in actual abuse, but an increase in victims’, and sometimes abusers’, willingness to come forward,” Marios Nicolaou, one of the centre’s social workers, told the Cyprus Mail.
“This is very positive because it shows the victims are reacting and it’s also positive for us, who try to help and shows our message is getting across…
“[However] the numbers reported are not the real incidences of violence. According to international estimates, for every report made, there are five more incidences of violence that aren’t reported. In other words, the numbers in Cyprus are probably five times greater than what we know, although we have no actual evidence of this.”
Nicolaou said domestic violence could be psychological, physical, sexual or a combination of two or more. He said sexual abuse was reported more rarely.
Reports were either made by victims, abusers or people close to the family who wanted to help the victims.
The social worker said that according to the centre’s statistics for 2005, 73 child victims had also been reported, and that 69 children, including 28 boys and 41 girls, had already been reported during the first six months of this year.
“This again shows an increase, but it is safer to say that more people are reporting the abuse than that the levels of abuse have changed,” Nicolaou said.
He said abuse against minors was also reported directly to the social welfare services and/or the police, which was another reason why the centre’s numbers regarding children was not greater.
“Children seek help and support from other services beyond the domestic violence centre,” he said.
According to the centre’s statistics, most incidences of violence against minors was from fathers or stepfathers, followed by the mother, other relatives and family friends.
Nicolaou said there had also been cases of father, cousins, uncles and grandfathers sexually abusing children. Unfortunately, these cases were rarely reported by family members due to fears of social stigmatisation, he said.
In 2005, the centre also dealt with 44 reports of children who were the abusers.
“This is normally children who are abusive with their parents and are not always under 18. Sometimes though, it involves siblings or cousins who are physically or sexually violent towards each other.”
Nicolaou added that these children had not necessarily been the victims of abuse themselves.
He said: “We get a lot of reports of teenagers who become extremely violent and break things in the home, threaten their parents, become verbally abusive and sometimes, though rarely, become physical with their parents if they don’t get something that they want.”
The social worker said most reports of violence came from the Nicosia district. This could be due to several factors including the capital’s larger population and the fact that the centre was headquartered there.
“It’s likely that people who live in Nicosia or in the surrounding area have heard of the centre’s existence or come across it more often than someone living in a Limassol or Paphos district village,” he said.
