Domestic Violence

Anchor: In the current East European context of recession, high unemployment, inflation and other woes, tensions are increasingly being vented through violence in the home. According to recent Hungarian statistics every hour 6.6 women are abused. Last year, more than 13 hundred women out of a total of 55 hundred reported assaults were the victims of domestic abuse. More than 90 women were killed within family.

To bring the domestic violence issue out of the closet NaNe! Association- the first Hungarian domestic violence project - launched a public education campaign and the first Hotline for battered women and children. Indicative of the importance of NaNe!'s work is the approximate 40 thousand dollars it has raised in start-up support from six institutional sponsors.
After one year of existence today's over 30 NaNe!'s volunteers have taken about 4 hundred calls for help, and over 70 media reports provided a vital link to those who needed their services.

Zsuzsa Beres, director of NaNe! presents the association's platform:

(9")(English)"The undeclared war in the family must stop. The first step for every individual, small community and government alike, is to acknowledge the existence of the problem and admit that they have to do something about it."

The stories volunteers hear on the Hotline fully bear out the old Hungarian saying : "Money is best counting, women are best beaten." In whatever context, the overriding theme is control over women. The range of abuse is wide, the scenarios dramatic, solutions, non-existent. There is little help either from the police, or the legal and judicial system.

Hotline volunteer coordinator, Zsuzsana Legeny, complains that police are uncooperative:

(17")(Hungarian)"Women who call on the Hotline are complaining that the police don't take them seriously. Some were even told that there can't be a policemen in every bed. Even when they complain of severe injuries, they were belittled, 'Oh, Mississ, you should have seen Ms. Kovacs yesterday. That beating of yours is nothing.' For them a car theft is more important then a human life."

Recently, NaNe! and Human Rights Commissioner for Budapest, attorney Gyorgy Mohay, submitted a petition to Hungary's Constitutional Court to challenge the non-criminal status in Hungarian law of marital rape.

Mohay explains why:

(15")(Hungarian)"The law allows marital rape, it doesn't punish it. We think that the women have the right to control their sexuality. Marriage doesn't imply compulsory sexual services on behalf of the women. This kind of rape has to be punished. We are aware that it's difficult to prove in many situations, but we want to encourage the victims to declare it."

(12")(Hungarian)"The women don't easily report it. They lose their self respect, they feel defiled and it's hard for them even to talk about it. As for domestic violence, it's a law question, if it's decided that this is a crime, of course I'll go and inforce the law. But according to today's laws this is not a crime."

The vast majority of the women who seek NaNe!'s help have tried everything to get themselves and their children out of the abusive relationships.
The situation is even worse in rural Hungary, because of a lack of democratic traditions. Housing and cultural circumstances make things different . The women in Karad - a village of 28 hundred people - responded to psychological and physical terror when they set up the first countryside branch of NaNe!.

The director of Karad NaNe!, Vera Verb, is herself a victim of domestic abuse. She says her story is not an exception:

(10")(Hungarian)"In our county a husband is often beating his wife. I have two children, my husband drinks a lot and he is rude and aggressive with us, he broke our things at home... He says that he drinks because he is embittered, because he is unemployed."

Clearly, the help NaNe! can provide like placing women and their children in homeless shelters or encouraging them to defend themselves, is only a symptomatic treatment.
Most of the shelters, run by the local government, charities or churches, are in Budapest and they are always full. Next week the Salvation Army from Switzerland, will open the first shelter exclusively for battered women and children in Hungary. There will be space for only five.

Ruth Tschopp from the Salvation Army:

(10") (English)"One of the condition for a woman to come to our house is that she wants to change something in her situation, we are not just a hiding place from the husband. We try that they will not stay too long, maximum three months."

But everybody agrees that these are just temporary solutions. Women mostly committed to their family, have reached a point where they feel they simply cannot go on without totally wrecking their own and their children's lives.

Central Europe Today
February 17, 1995