Only decisive action will stop violence against women - PN

The Nationalist Party believes only decisive action will stop violence against women as it expressed sorrow that World Domestic Violence Elimination Day has been tainted by femicide. 

“It would have been more courageous and satisfactory if we could boast the advances that have been made,” PN MPs Graziella Attard Previ and Claudette Buttigieg said on Friday.

They said it is not laws on paper that protect people or prevent tragedies. “It is prompt actions, the result of well-functioning systems, which can only do this,” the MPs said.

The 16 days awareness campaign on domestic violence this year coincides with the murder of Bernice Cassar, a 40-year-old mother of two, who was shot by her husband while on her way to work.

Police never arrested her husband when he failed to turn up for an interview at the Floriana police headquarters following yet another report filed by the woman. Bernice was assaulted by Roderick Cassar, 42, outside the Floriana health centre on Sunday, 13 November, where she had been receiving medical attention.

On the day, she immediately fled the health centre to the nearby police headquarters, where she waited seven hours, unsuccessfully, to file her report. She returned the next day and waited another two hours to file her report

This system failure betrayed Bernice Cassar when she was killed on Tuesday morning.

The PN insisted the time for debate has passed, and now only decisive action is required to stop violence against women.

“The party is committed to keep fighting until every woman in Malta is protected, while also ensuring action is taken as soon as a woman files a police report,” Attard Previ and Buttigieg said.