The article “9 things we learned when investigating partner violence and femicide in Slovakia” by Ria Gehrerová, and Alžbeta Kyselicová – Denník N, discusses femicide and intimate partner violence in Slovakia. The investigation was a data collection of police statistics and other research from the European Journalism Network, and most data was collected by Barbara Burajvá – a lawyer who worked with the Coordination and Methodology Center for Gender-Based and Domestic Violence (KMC). The article states that the police in Slovakia do not record reported offences and therefore their figures will not be completely accurate.
The first finding the article discusses is that a third of women who are murdered had their intimate partner as the perpetrator. The Slovak police found that 43 out of the 125 reported cases of femicide were committed by an intimate partner or ex-partner. Furthermore, women were killed three times more than men in fatal intimate partner violence, and nine times more to be stalked or face threats than men.
The second fact discussed within this article is that many victims of femicide are uncounted in the statistics. The figures used in the Slovak statistics include cases where a man was prosecuted for being the perpetrator of femicide. Victims who are unaccounted for often also include children of the victim or family and friends who attempted to help the victim. They also do not include cases where the perpetrator may kill the women and commit suicide at the same time. This includes instances where the partner purposely puts both themselves and their partner in danger by purposely crashing their car for example. Estimates have shown that around 100,000 women from Slovakia have experienced this form of intimate partner violence each year.
The third finding was that the police were three times more likely to prosecute rapists, as they found that the numbers of prosecutions made by police for intimate partner violence were extremely low compared to other countries with similar amounts of reports. It was also found that the courts rarely attempted to protect victims such as restraining orders. The fourth finding was that there has been a decrease in the amount of prosecution for intimate partner violence in Slovakia, dropping over a third in the past seven years.
The fifth finding is that rapes go underreported considering only 50 prosecutions for rape were initiated by the police per year. This is a very low number considering a 2017 study found that almost five percent of women in Slovakia have reported experiencing sexual violence. The sixth finding was that almost half of rape case victims were women under 19 years of age, but this does not necessarily mean that rape and sexual assault happens more often to teenagers.
The seventh finding in the article is that rape has been obscuring the meaning of sexual abuse when the Slovak law refers to rape and sexual assault as two different things. Usually the number of cases involving sexual assault surpass the amount of cases involving rape, but in Slovakia it is the opposite since Slovakia stereotypes sexual assault as penetration. The eighth finding reported in the article is that changing the law will not be enough, because the laws implemented so far have not been effective. The article calls on society to focus on prevention rather than punishment in order to create real change. The ninth finding is that they need to find a way to restrain the offenders more efficiently and furthermore, try to change them by using professionals who are trained to work with them.
