This sobering reality is based on statistics published in Britain, where two women a week are killed by their partners or ex-partners. Additionally, a vicious cycle of abuse at home is believed to be the cause of 10 female suicides every week. But the UK is not an exception. In New York City, which has a population of about 8.5 million, there were 71 family-related homicides in 2006 and police were called to domestic violence incidents on average 600 times a day, which means a total of 221,071 incidents. Despite the high level of intervention, 83 percent of the homicides recorded were cases that had never reached the police previously. This shows that official statistics on domestic violence, even when the authorities do their best to collect data, only reveal a fraction of the abuse that is really taking place. The New York Municipality has a special unit dealing exclusively with family violence and there are 2,091 shelter beds available in the city.
For the Turkish authorities, trying to improve the support they offer abuse victims, there are lessons to be drawn from the experience of other countries. Appropriate training of law enforcement officials is crucial if the victims are to be adequately protected. But the problem does not end with the arrest.
The next step -- the prosecution of the abuser -- is often a challenge. Many victims, traumatized by a long ordeal, are easily intimidated into withdrawing their complaints. Different strategies have been devised to circumvent this obstacle: in New York State for instance, district attorneys can use a no-drop policy to prosecute cases on the basis of evidence alone, when victims are reluctant to take the matter to court.
In Britain, police officers in special units are now wearing helmets fitted with a mini digital camera when they are called to intervene in a domestic dispute. This allows them to record in vivid details the scene of the incident: the broken furniture, the bruised victim, the angry abuser. This makes it easier to convince judges that the respectable-looking gentleman in a business suit, who appears so composed in court, is in fact a wife-beater who loses control and lashes out when he feels slighted. Contrary to popular perceptions, domestic violence cuts across society and affects the wealthy as well as the poor. Conviction ratios are still low, although they are rising significantly when cases are handled in specialist courts dealing exclusively with family violence. In such tribunals, newly set up in parts of the UK, up to 65 percent of cases result in a conviction.
Domestic violence is increasingly recognized as a crime like no other. It is not perpetrated upon strangers, but involves an intimate and often twisted relation between victim and abuser. The need to provide psychological support for the victims has long been accepted, but increasingly, as is the case in New York State, rehabilitation programs for the abusers are introduced and sometimes mandatory as part of the conviction. Better coordination between social services, civil society and law enforcement also allows convicted wife-beaters to be monitored even after their release from prison or after a protection order is lifted.
