Contributed by Agnieszka Mrozik, National VAW Monitor for Poland

On December 2004, the Polish government approved the draft of Counteraction Violence in Close Relations Act. The act was drafted by the Secretary of Polish Plenipotentiary for Gender Equality, Minister Magdalena Sroda. The project is based on four assumptions: domestic violence is a crime; the state is responsible for the prevention of domestic violence and punishment of the perpetrator; the perpetrator is responsible for his or her actions; and the victim has the right to be safe. One of the most significant regulations of the new act is the order to keep the perpetrator away from the victim, including the perpetrator’s eviction from the place of common living. The draft law forbids the perpetrator to have any contact with the victim for 3 months: no phone calls, e-mails, and physical contacts. This regulation also allows for the perpetrator to be banned from the place of common living. Other provisions include: compulsory therapy for the perpetrator, ban on corporal punishment of children, and cooperation of all individuals and institutions that aim at fighting against violence to achieve better results.

Unfortunately, this draft was not accepted by Polish Parliament, where it was discussed on February 2005. The act was approved by the left-wing and peasants’ parties (Alliance for Democratic Left; Polish Social-democracy; Labor Union; Polish Peasants’ Party; Self-defense), but the right-wing parties (Civic Platform; Law and Justice; League of Polish Families) voted to reject it. Some right-wing politicians considered the whole project an “idea of frustrated feminists who aimed at bringing up next generations of deviants – victims of stress-free education” (Stanislaw Gudzowski from League of Polish Families). Others boasted on their wonderful educational methods based on corporal punishment of children: “I brought up seven kids giving them the belt” said Halina Nowina-Konopka (Polish Agreement) and Tadeusz Cymanski (Law and Justice) quoted the Bible to prove that spanking only help to educate children. Many politicians were against the suggested regulation on the eviction of perpetrator from the place shared with the victim claiming that it would influence the growing number of the homeless (Antoni Stryjewski from Catholic and National Movement). The most revolutionary regulations, which were to forbid the perpetrator any contact with the victim and which allowed the victim to get rid of the perpetrator from the shared place of living, were removed from the act, in spite of the protests of many women’s organizations in Poland. The regulation, which banned corporal punishment of children, stayed in the project. The whole act will be voted once again but it is difficult to say when. Some suspect that Polish Parliament may attempt to ignore the whole idea.