Domestic violence reports ‘grew several times’ over last 5 years in Lithuania

Lithuania adopted its law on domestic violence law five years ago and the number of reported cases of domestic abuse has been growing, which suggests that Lithuanians are increasingly recognising domestic violence as a crime.

“I would not even raise a question like whether this law was needed or not. I think we needed to adopt it 10 years ago, we would have gone much further. The importance of the law is to show that domestic violence is a crime. This is not a domestic conflict. Moreover, because of this law, we started to talk about assistance to victims, their protection,” said Dalia Kuodytė, member of the parliamentary Social Affairs and Labour Committee.

The number of reported cases of domestic violence grew several times after the adoption of the law, according to the Public Police Prevention Division Investigator Artūras Bajorinas.

“If in 2012 we received about 18,000 reports, in 2015 there were 38,000. As we can see, the trend is obvious,” said Mr. Bajorinas.

LRT