845 charged with domestic violence this year, nine with rape

A total of 845 people were charged in court with domestic violence in the first eight months of this year, data tabled in Parliament shows.

Home affairs minister Carmelo Abela, in response to a a series of parliamentary question by Labour MP Luciano Busuttil, said that these included 571 men and 274 women.

Elsewhere, nine people, all of whom were men, were charged with rape, and 42 people (39 women and three men) were charged with loitering for prostituion between January and August this year.

Shadow health minister Claudette Buttigieg warned that incidents of domestic violence in Malta are on the rise, citing the police force’s most recent crime review which indiciated that it is now the fourth most common crime in the country. 

Addressing a parliamentary debate on the 2017 Budget estimates for the civil liberties ministry, Buttigieg questioned when Malta will fully implement the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence – that it ratified in 2014.

She asked what progress has actually been made on the ground since March, when civil liberties minister Helena Dalli presented a raft of proposals to the Domestic Violence Act that would see the Istanbul Convention’s aims transposed into Maltese law.

The proposals seek to broaden the definition to include financial, sexual, psychological and economic abuse as well as broaden the understanding of perpetrators to include former married partners.

Amendments to the criminal code will include protections against sexual exploitation and stalking, making punishments harsher in cases where laws already exist. The amendments also allow for access to statistics on domestic violence to be collected from the courts and police.

Another suggested amendment would also entail that perpetrators of violence would be sent out of the marital home rather than the victim of violence having to seek shelter elsewhere, regardless of financial income.

Buttigieg urged the government to go a step further and introduce further safeguards for victims of domestic violence, in the event that their abusers return to their old homes.