Since the beginning of the year, 34 people have ended up in prison due to domestic violence.
Prosecutor's offices record a higher number of reports than in previous years, and the Center for Women's Rights believes that this is the result of greater awareness among citizens.
They state that the prosecution offices are noticeably more up-to-date, but also that the court has the last word.
With the reminder of the case of Zimrita Nerda, they want to believe that justice for victims of violence will no longer be sought on the street.
Almost every day new cases of domestic violence can be found in the media.
According to the Higher Court for Misdemeanors, reporting is more frequent than before and in the first half of the year, Montenegrin courts handled 1.381 cases from this area, of which they resolved 637.
For the sake of comparison, last year the courts dealt with a total of 2.334 cases, of which, as the report of the Judicial Council shows, 1.567 were resolved.
According to the Center for Women's Rights, these data are the result of raising citizens' awareness of the need to report violence.
"What is noticeable is a greater promptness of the prosecution in processing these cases, a much greater number, for example, of detention orders than was the case before, and I attribute this to some earlier instruction for the prosecution, which was previously issued by acting VDT Maja Jovanović, but also some personnel changes," said Maja Raičević, executive director of the Center for Women's Rights.
While reminding that earlier studies showed that one in five women suffer abuse in Montenegro, Raičević believes that the institutions have finally begun to take the problem of domestic violence more seriously.
"Because through the conversation with the current VDT, we actually came to a joint solution to significantly improve the practice of the prosecution through new guidelines that will be put in place, harmonized with the current new criminal legislation. So, I believe that this will bring fundamental changes in the treatment of these cases ", Raičević said.
Raičević hopes that bad practices that continue to occur due to different interpretations of the law or insensitivity towards victims will also change.
"When a victim of violence is reported for violence, and this happens as a form of manipulation of the system by the abuser, we recently had an extremely worrying case where a young mother who was breastfeeding a baby was detained for 12 hours in the police station because her husband, who otherwise committed violence, reported," Raičević said.
In the end, however, the courts have the main say, which sent 34 thugs to prison this year.
Fines were imposed in 208 cases, there were 109 suspended sentences, and acquittals were handed down in 136 cases.
With the reminder of the case of Zimrita Nerda, whose murderer was initially sentenced to 12 years in prison, the Center for Women's Rights hopes that they will no longer have to seek a just verdict from the streets.
"I want to believe that the judiciary is ready to change its attitude towards this issue," said Raičević.
He also believes that as a society we have finally matured to understand how devastating violence is.
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