There are more and more children who abuse their parents, but it is unknown how many abusers there are among that population.
This is shown by the data of the SOS Podgorica and SOS Nikšić emergency call lines, which in the past two years received about 40 calls due to abused parents by their, mostly adult, children.
How many bullies beat their parents in Montenegro is a question to which there is no precise answer.
Nevertheless, there are fathers and mothers whose children raised their hands all around us. Even more of those who are cursed, insulted, abused, threatened by children...
Parents are mostly silent. Due to shame and condemnation from the environment, they usually do not even report the violence. They call the police or ask for help only when they are seriously injured or fear for their lives. Only the most drastic cases reach the media.
Ljiljana Raicevic from the Safe Women's House says that most women who suffer violence from their husbands, over time, their children also begin to abuse them.
"In a large number of cases, women who come to us also have problems with their children, with their son or daughter. We usually find out in a conversation with them that the child hit them. We often hear how children insult their mothers who came to us. "I recently heard how the little girl was talking to her mother, how she was cursing her," she said.
As he adds, the women who come to them are usually not even aware that they suffer violence not only from their violent husbands, but also from their children. The woman who was cursed by her daughter was not at all aware that her child was abusing her.
One case of a grandmother who was beaten by her grandson is particularly noteworthy.
"We had a case where a grandson beat a grandmother, she came to our shelter, and he stayed in her apartment and took her pension," says Ljiljana Raičević.
He says they faced different situations. It is also violence when old parents sell their apartment because of their son who gambles because he is threatened by debtors, so they stay on the street, she states.
He says that they wrote to the centers for social work when they see that children are violent towards their parents when they come to their shelter and adds that this problem, which is hardly talked about at all, must be dealt with by all - the centers, the police and the prosecutor's office.
Juveniles are coming too
The Law on Protection from Domestic Violence very clearly specifies family relationships, which include parents and children and women and men. The police keep records of family relationships between victims and perpetrators of violence, while courts provide information only about juvenile perpetrators of violence.
According to the director of the SOS telephone in Podgorica Biljana Zeković, among the perpetrators of the criminal act of domestic violence in 2019, four minors were recorded, the year before there were seven, and in 2017 there were five.
The Police Administration did not respond to a request to provide statistical data on when parents are victims of violence by their children.
However, data from the Emergency Call Line, SOS Podgorica and SOS Nikšić show such worrying data. During the last two years, they had about 40 calls about parental abuse.
Psychologist Nikolina Boljević from SOS Podgorica said that it is always difficult for parents to report their child, so such reports often come from other people, neighbors, relatives...
"There are often conflicts due to a difficult financial situation, it is very difficult to solve the housing issue, and these children stay to live with their parents, and there are very often disagreements, conflicts, violent forms of behavior, bullying...", she said.
This further complicates the situation because parents refuse to use the legal options available to them, such as, for example, removal measures from the apartment and other living space, restraining orders, etc., because they are aware that their children, even though they are of age, have nowhere to go because they have no neither a job, nor an apartment, nor any living conditions, and they, as they often state, "can't throw them out on the street".
Nada Koprivica from the SOS line Nikšić states that in five of the 34 cases of violence by children against their parents, they were teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18, and the rest were adults. The most common victims were mothers, but also both parents. Most of the perpetrators are sons.
"Cases in which children's violence against their parents is reported are rarely prosecuted, and if this happens, the parents refuse to testify, which results in acquittals," said Koprivica.
Identification with the father
Psychologist Ana Jaredić from the Center for Women's Rights says that they most often encounter children who verbally abuse their mothers because they saw it from their violent father.
"Children, mostly male, identify with their father and are verbally violent towards their mother. There are also cases where children who are instructed by the father during the divorce proceedings and custody award are verbally violent towards the mother," she said.
She adds that it is understandable that it is not easy to tell someone outside the family that the person she gave birth to and raised is violent towards them.
"However, this is precisely what favors the abuser to continue behaving in the same way. The violence will not stop until the abuser receives a clear message that violence is not allowed, and that is the job of the institutions of the system. Therefore, it is necessary to put your safety and the right to a dignified life before inconvenience. The bully is the one who is responsible for the violence and the only one who, in the case of a report, should be uncomfortable".
She explains that the methods that abusers use to keep their victims include the abuse of emotions, so between violent periods there are also those in which they "repent" and convince the victim that the violence will not happen again.
Attorney Željko Đukanović says that they had a lot of cases involving domestic violence by children, but that he would point out two as the most serious - the murder of a girl for which her own sister is suspected, and her mother helped her organize it, and the son suspected of having killed his father. In the first case, the girl was acquitted, and the son was sentenced to four years in prison.
As he adds, although those two cases were committed in the family, the criminal offense of murder was charged.
"These acts are most often committed by children who are addicted to psychoactive substances or in an alcoholic state," said Đukanović.
He points out that it is the unquestionable institutional duty of the courts to, through a consistent penal policy, give their full contribution to the implementation plan - special and general prevention in order to protect family members from one another and consequently to protect them from damaged family relationships.
In addition, he adds that it is also necessary for other institutions to react in a timely manner in order to protect the victims in a preventive manner.
Court practice, explains Đukanović, cannot be generalized, because each individual case depends on the facts and circumstances established during the procedure.
Sociologist Andrija Djukanovic explains that life in a family that is dysfunctional, affected by some form of addiction, produces family relationships that negatively affect the development of the child's personality.
"Due to such circumstances, it is likely that the child will develop in the direction of an aggressive person who will direct that aggression towards the parents. But social factors should not be excluded from the search for reasons for this type of violent behavior. It is possible that the occurrence of violence is influenced by the dissatisfaction of young people with their own lives, the inability to achieve some imposed ideals. Sanctions and work to prevent violence must be combined".
He points out that institutions often do not react professionally to the occurrence of domestic violence, whoever is perpetrating it.
Although it often seems that violence against fathers and mothers is a phenomenon of our time, it is not quite so. In the extensive study "Violence of children against parents", one of the few that has been published, which is the author Miljana Ljubičić, we are reminded that the folklore that came down to us from the XNUMXth century from Western Europe brings stories about ungrateful sons and daughters. Their essence can be summed up in this way - the father sold all his possessions to marry his son, and then the latter refused to take care of his parent. He eventually kicked him out of the house, and when the father appeared at the door hungry, the son hid all the food. The story goes on like this: at the end, the toad jumped on the ungrateful son's face and because of his wickedness - greed and avarice - disfigured him so much that he could no longer live among people.
Violence in court
Last year, according to information from the Police Administration, 265 criminal acts of domestic or family violence were registered. Cases of domestic violence that have criminal characteristics are generally treated as misdemeanors. Thus, last year there were 1.505 violations. In the first nine months of this year, there were 177 criminal acts of domestic violence. Those who were treated as misdemeanors were much more - 1.295.
Courts generally imposed fines or suspended sentences. For a long time, there has been a warning about a lenient penal policy towards domestic abusers.
In the basic courts of Montenegro, in 2020, out of 166 cases that were resolved, in 66 cases, a prison sentence was awarded. For the first nine months of this year, out of 108 verdicts, 38 were sentenced to prison.
Last year, 148 men and 19 women were convicted, and in the first nine months of this year, 111 men and 10 women.
The text is supported by the support of small grants through the program "Zdravlje ima rod", which is implemented by the SOS telephone for women and children victims of violence Podgorica and OC Bona fide, with the financial support of the Delegation of the European Union in Montenegro and the Ministry of Public Administration, Digital Society and Media . The content is the sole responsibility of the DPNCG and does not reflect the views of the donors
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