Domestic violence cases in 2021 climbed by 13% over previous years

Malta has experienced a double-digit spike in women seeking assistance over the island’s epidemic of domestic violence crime.

In 2021, the rate of women – who formed 78.9% of service users – who needed support over domestic violence, climbed by 12.9% over 2020.

The increase, compared to 2019, is 28.5%, from 2,565 to 3,295.

The figures continue to shed light on the urgency to provide immediate assistance to victims of domestic violence, who are outrightly women, in the wake of femicides and murders in which husbands killed their wives despite being reported to the police’s Domestic Violence Unit.

There was national outrage at the state of Malta’s support services for murder victim Bernice Cilia, a mother of two shot dead in daylight by estranged husband Roderick Cassar, where a government inquiry found that the State failed to protect her because of lack of resources and increased work load.

The latest NSO data shows that during 2021, 171 persons – 94% male – made use of services available for perpetrators, such as the ‘Stop!’ programme at Aġenzija Appoġġ and the Department of Probation and Parole.

In 2021, as in previous years, the main services used by persons experiencing domestic violence were the Domestic Violence Unit (DVU) within Aġenzija Appoġġ (2,461 registered cases) and the Police Department (1,918 individual reports).

More than half of the total cases registered across all services involved persons aged 30-49, the majority involving Maltese nationals (85.4%).