Contributed by: Agnieszka Mrozik, Poland National VAW Monitor

The prosecutor’s list of charges against a 62-year old resident of Żary is very long. For several years, the man has been physically and emotionally abusing his wife. He usually started fights when he was drunk. He started from calling his wife the worst names and from threats, then he beat her, kicked her and pulled her hair.

When he was too drunk to fight against his wife, he threw everything he managed to grab at her. Though the woman was beaten and regularly raped, she never reported this to the police. She was afraid of her husband’s revenge who threatened her with death in case she reported this to the police. The man also used to “punish” his wife by locking her in the basement, where he kept her for a few days without food and water.

In the summer of 2006, the woman attempted to commit suicide, but she was saved. She ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Żary. Only there, she revealed her secret. The doctors called the police.

“On account of an inquiry, we may state that the woman attempted to kill herself because for years, her husband abused her physically and emotionally” – said Kazimierz Rubaszewski, the spokesman of the district prosecutor’s office in Zielona Góra. At the beginning of 2007, the man was sent an indictment. He may spend the next five years in prison.

According to the statistics (provided by the Polish Nationwide Emergency Service for Victims of Domestic Violence “Blue Line”), in 95 percent of cases, the domestic violence is connected with the abuse of alcohol. Forty percent of people abusing members of their families are alcohol-addicts. “The probability of acts of domestic violence in alcoholic families is twice as high as in other families. There is also the repetition of patterns derived from childhood. Daughters of brutal, alcohol-addict fathers often decide to marry men with similar tendencies” – this is what Sylwia Kluczyńska, PhD in psychology, the expert for counteraction domestic violence, writes on the website of the “Blue Line.”

Domestic violence should be reported to the police say the experts. The victims may then be helped by the police psychologist and policemen who, intervening in the fight, may later testify in court. The victims, perpetrators and witnesses of domestic violence may get some more information by calling a toll-free number, 0-800-120-002, which operates on weekdays and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and on Sundays and holidays from 10:00 to 4:00 p.m. One may also obtain some advice by calling the number +48 22 666 28 50, which operates on Mondays between 7 and 9 p.m. and on Wednesdays from 6 p.m.

Compiled from: Maja Sałwacka, Oprawca zmusił żonę do samobójstwa, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, last access January 21, 2007; unofficial translation by Agnieszka Mrozik