Shocking figures show violence against women is no rare affair

One in seven Maltese women have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15, and one in five have been victims of sexual harassment during the last year alone, a ground-breaking survey by the EU’s fundamental rights agency (FRA) has found.

Furthermore, 16% of Maltese women said they suffered from physical violence before their fifteenth birthday, 10% reported being victims of sexual violence before the age of 15, and 23% stating that they had suffered physical, sexual or psychological abuse prior to turning 15.

Maltese women themselves believe violence against women is still a common affair, with 56% deeming it ‘fairly common’, and 33% stating that it was ‘very common’.

It is a well-known fact that crimes of violence against women exist and that most of these crimes do not get reported for fear on the part of the victim that no action will be taken, resulting in a potential gateway for more abuse.

Civil liberties minister Helena Dalli has described the FRA survey, which was based on in-depth interviews with a random sample of 42,000 women aged 18 to 74, as “an eye-opener” when it comes to crimes that are going unreported.

One result of the survey – which showed that only 14% of women reported their most serious incident of intimate partner violence to the police, and a lowly 13% reported their most serious incident of non-partner violence – seemed to put weight to Dalli’s claims.

Human rights organisation Aditus Foundation on Saturday commemorated International Women’s Day in a call to the public and the government to focus on the impact of violence against women and to strive for its eradication.

“It must be noted that these numbers, as worrying as they are, may be much lower than the truth. For example, the women surveyed admitted not having reported serious incidents of physical and/or sexual violence by a partner. The women did not contact police because they preferred to deal with the violence themselves or believed it was a family matter (35%), felt that the incident was minor (22%), were afraid (13%) or ashamed (12%), or decided to keep it private — presumably not telling anyone (13%).

“However, in spite of just 15% of women having cited violence by a partner, a significant 41% of the women surveyed indicated that they knew women in their circle of friends and family who had been victims of some form of domestic violence,” Aditus director Neil Falzon said.

From the survey, it transpired that just two percent of Maltese women reported physical or sexual violence from their current partner, while 4% said that their previous partner physically or sexually abused them.

Meanwhile, 22% of women in Malta divulged that they had suffered psychological violence from their current partner and 59% reported that they suffered such abuse from their previous partner.

Among its key findings, the research showed that one in three women across the European Union have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15, in more than one in five cases the abuse originated from an intimate partner rather than from a stranger.

A shocking 21 million women – or 12% – indicated that they have experienced sexual abuse or incident by an adult before the age of 15. Just over one in five women have experienced some form of physical or sexual abuse from a current or previous partner, with one in 20 having been the victims of rape.

Across the European Union, 18% of women said they experienced stalking since the age of 15, and 5% of women have experienced stalking in the 12 months preceding the survey. This corresponds to about nine million women in the EU28 experiencing stalking within a period of 12 months.

In Malta, 26% had experienced being stalked since the age of 15, while  6% said they had been stalked before they turned 15.

In total, the research indicated that around 13 million women in the EU have experienced physical violence in the course of the 12 months before the survey interviews, with an estimated 3.7 million women having experienced sexual violence during the same period.

Neil Falzon also said that although people tend to think of violence as being physical, the impact and violence of psychological abuse should not be underestimated. “It may even extend to economic violence by a partner, including forbidding a woman to work outside the home. Economic violence was reported by Maltese women at a rate of 11%.”

Aditus welcomed the recent developments for the advancement of women’s rights in Malta, namely the establishment of the Sexual Assault Response Team at Mater Dei Hospital that offers sexual assault victims the services of a doctor, nurse, social worker, psychologist and police officer.

Earlier this week, Helena Dalli also announced the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, which is the convention to prevent and combat violence against women and domestic violence.

“We ask that these initiatives be supported by vigorous educational campaigns and the continuous training of the police, healthcare professionals and employers. Furthermore, there needs to be a greater effort towards attaining gender equality in Malta, since the empowerment of women leads to higher levels of disclosure about violence against them,” Falzon said.

“Every sector of Maltese society must be watchful for violence against women. All campaigns on the subject must be directed at men as much as at women – and men need to feel a positive, proactive engagement in confronting the violent acts of some men against women.”