Victims of domestic violence should be given “immediate and effective” protection, something that is still lacking despite progress, lawyer and activist Lara Dimitrijevic said. “This is something that the current system is not offering; something I have been talking about for the past 11 years,” she said when speaking on TVM’s Xtra on Monday night. Dimitrijevic said it is the state that is accountable for the faults in the system that cause more harm to victims of domestic violence. Parliamentary Secretary for Reforms and Equality Rebecca Buttigieg said investment in this sector over the past 30 years had been lacking. “Authorities did not have the training, tools or mindset to offer the adequate help for victims,” she said, adding recent reforms had started addressing some of these issues. Julianne Grima, a psychotherapist, said domestic violence victims are scared of not being believed by the police. This fear, she added, is rooted in the fact that there are certain police officers who use derogatory language when speaking to victims. Graziella Attard Previ, the Nationalist Party’s spokesperson for equality said both sides in parliament worked for the optimal protection of victims. Attard Previ said it was the Opposition’s duty to highlight instances where the system isn’t working. She said an issue of concern was the delays experienced by victims in the judicial process that only made the situation worse. Attard Previ also referred to the Kidflix case, that involved an international ring of paedophiles who shared sexually explicit images of children, which raised the question of whether or not the public register of child abuse and sexual offenders should become public. Buttigieg acknowledged that more needs to be done for victims, saying that “the law is dynamic,” and it reacts to cases that expose a fault in the system, such as femicide. The parliamentary secretary said there is an ongoing internal analysis of laws to determine how they can be improved. She said this is why there should be more women in power as women are more sensitive to issues like these. System still slated against victims of sexual assault Dimitrijevic commented about a recent case involving a priest who was jailed for sexually abusing a 15-year-old. The sentence was reduced on appeal with the judge justifying this by saying that the relationship was ‘consensual’. “This is not the first time we’ve heard a comment like this in our courts,” she said. While big strides are being made in the fight against domestic violence, the situation is quite different in the fight against sexual assault. She said the process currently largely blames the victim and there is a lack of understanding what consent truly is. This has led to comments like the one passed by the judge. Dimitrijevic said that the conversation should be about the exploitation carried out by the adult in power and not blame the victim. Grima concurred, saying that victims such as the one in this case who had trouble at home can easily interpret any sort of affection as romance and it was up to the aggressor to prevent the ‘relationship’ by declining from the beginning. Should risk assessments be obligatory? Grima spoke about the risk assessment that is done to people that report domestic violence. She explained that this process is done to see what level of danger the victim faces and what the best way forward is. The risk assessment is a standardised questionnaire done by a professional in the area of psychology and social work. Buttigieg said that discussions are being conducted with experts in the area, but there are differing opinions. She explained that some professionals believe that risk assessments should be obligatory to better understand the case, whereas others argue that by forcing a risk assessment onto an unwilling victim they might not answer truthfully. Attard Previ asserted that she is in favour of risk assessments being obligatory, and talked about a parliamentary question that she posed regarding the standard operating procedure when someone reports domestic violence. She expressed dissatisfaction about the answer she received, saying it was very ambiguous. Rather than receiving a step-by-step list of what happens, she was told that this should remain classified as this is a sensitive procedure.