Starting with next year, the police will be able to intervene in cases of domestic violence by immediately issuing emergency protection orders when necessary. The aggressor will be removed from the family for a period of at most ten days. In the period, the victim will be able to apply to court for a restraining order for a period of 30 days.
Contacted by IPN, Angelina Zaporojan-Pargari, director of the Women’s Law Center that holds the secretariat of the National Coalition “Life without Violence in the Family”, said that a number of instruments for discouraging aggressors, including the restraining order, will take effect next March 2017. If the order is disregarded, the aggressor will be arrested.
Currently, the protective order is issued by judges and it takes long for the victim to reach court. There are cases when the victims of violence go often to the police to submit a complaint as they don’t know that they have the right to a protection order and should go directly to court.
“There are police officers in each community, but there aren’t judges in each community. When the case is reported directly to the police, this will be able to intervene immediately with an emergency protection order. The police will have to assume a very active role in preventing and combating violence,” stated Angelina Zaporojan-Pargari.
She explained that the emergency protection order bans the aggressor from appearing in the home. This will be deprived of keys so that he does not have access to the dwelling and will be banned from coming close to the victim and contacting this. If the emergency protection order is disregarded, the aggressor will be held accountable for the contravention. If a restraining order is issued meanwhile and the aggressor violates this, he will face criminal liability, which is a novelty in the national legislation. Now those who break the restraining order are arrested for three to 15 days and given community service.
Angelina Zaporojan-Pargari said the police will play the key role in reacting promptly and will inform the aggressor about what will happen if this continues to terrorize the victim. The goal is not to fill jails with domestic aggressors and reeducation programs are thus needed. “A large part of the aggressors adopt such behavior on purpose in order to exercise control and power over the victim. Work should be done for these to realize that they are violent and why. Specialists say the aggressors behave like this because of the privileges they think they have and that should be respected, like being served food immediately when they come home from work, the children to be looked after, the house to be clean, etc.” stated Angelina Zaporojan-Pargari.
According to her, the problem has its roots in society and in the roles of the family, men and women in society. A study carried out in 2015 showed that about 50% of the men consider the women’s role is to take care of the children and home, while about 40% believe that in case of a rape, it is the woman who is to blame owing to her behavior, etc.
Angelina Zaporojan-Pargari considers a possible solution for reeducating domestic aggressors is to institute services for these at the local level. Such services are currently provided by the only Center working in Drochia, but should be expanded to cover the whole country. Financing is needed for the purpose. This way the aggressor will not be jailed, but will be set free on condition that he attends assistance services.
