Public Defender Addresses Ministry of Internal Affairs with Recommendation regarding Ineffective Response to Cases of Domestic Violence
On December 29, 2017, Public Defender Nino Lomjaria addressed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia with a recommendation with regard to ineffective response to the cases of domestic violence. The Public Defender of Georgia believes it is necessary to introduce a monitoring system to supervise the enforcement of protective and restraining orders, ensure their effective functioning, provide risk assessment instructions for cases of domestic violence and develop individual action plan for each family dealing with domestic violence. In addition, notifications concerning alleged domestic violence and domestic conflicts received by 112 Service should be analyzed.
The Public Defender of Georgia studied several cases of attempted killing of women, as well as the cases when women were allegedly pushed to commit suicide. In each case the police were notified of the problem of domestic violence, but failed to protect the victims from repeated violence.
2 restraining orders had been issued with regard to domestic violence prior to the attempted murder of Kh.A.; 17 notifications had been sent to the police before A.L. was allegedly pushed to suicide; 3 calls had been made with regard to alleged domestic violence and an investigation had been launched before E.N. was allegedly pushed to commit suicide, although no administrative mechanisms had been applied to protect the woman.
The study of the cases showed that the response of the law enforcement agencies to the cases of domestic violence are often inconsistent, which makes the measures taken by them inefficient and cannot ensure protection of the affected/victims.