Montenegro: there are no more cases of domestic violence – there are more reports

“I don’t want to shock anyone,” commented the prime minister. Pedro Nuno speaks of “a huge lack of sensitivity, empathy and respect for the victims”.

O prime minister this Monday expressed his conviction that the increase two cases of domestic violence is due to the fact that there is more complaints and not a “real increase” and guaranteed his Government’s commitment to combating the phenomenon.

In a speech at the closing session of the conference “Combating violence against women and domestic violence”, at Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, in Cascais, Luis Montenegro stated that the crime of domestic violence “is often a silent crime” and, noting that he did not want to “shock anyone”, he said he had doubts that the increase in the number of cases recorded in statistics “means an increase in crime classified for domestic violence.”

“Because one of the phenomena that happened in recent years was precisely that a lot of things came out of the closet where they were hidden. I do not want, I repeat, to shock anyone, but I am aware that the increase we have seen in a few years does not mean a real increase, it means an increase in knowledge”, he said, adding that he is convinced that Portuguese society “was already much worse from this point of view”.

In this speech, made on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Montenegro assured that the “Government is committed to being able to take advantage of all its areas of action to, in a transversal and multisectoral way, contribute to detecting the occurrence of crime, punish yours responsible and, above all, protect as victims.”

Montenegro stressed that, currently, the Government is acting on prevention and supporting victims, claiming that it is perhaps doing “the biggest investment ever” in this regard, and highlighting that the objective was to review the model for assessing and managing the degree of risk of victims.

Furthermore, the Prime Minister stated that the Government intends to “create a financing line targeted at non-governmental organizations (ONG)” to work in the field of combating domestic violence, in addition to creating a financing fund for children’s educational training.

“We also want to implement a specialized program of support for family membersin particular children and adolescents of fatal victims of domestic violence”, he announced, highlighting that it would be a “significant step towards being able, in some way, to reduce the impact of such a tragic occurrence that, unfortunately, domestic violence brings”.

“I also hope that they can decrease year after year,” he said. In his intervention, the chief executive described the crime of domestic violence as a “horror crime”, highlighting that it is “continued”, is often not reportedand “occurs every day, confronting the victim with the greatest feeling of insecurity that a human being can have”.

“AND live inside fear. Frankly, there is nothing that can mobilize a political leader more than to contribute to eradicate, reduce, mitigate, depending on the possible magnitude of our actions and acts, such a significant dimension of the offense against the basic values ​​of respect for citizenship and people’s rights” , he said.

Montenegro stressed that the fight against domestic violence will “always be an incessant battle, which does not produce immediate results and will always be an unfinished task”.

“We know that This fight will never endnever. But the responsibility we have is that, when we bequeath to others who will come after us, we can deliver a better situation than the one we found,” he said.

Pedro Nuno didn’t like it

The PS leader accused the prime minister of “a huge lack of sensitivity, empathy and respect for the victims” and considers that “less lightness and more respect for the facts” are needed.

“Citizen Luís Montenegro has the right to find things, but a Prime Minister is required less lightness and more respect for the factsespecially when we talk about violence against women”, criticized, through social media, Pedro Nuno Santos.

The PS leader said that the Judiciary Police registered 344 women raped between January and September and that this year 25 women were murdered in Portugal.

“To state, in view of these facts, that reality ‘has already been much worse’ is, at the very least, a huge lack of sensitivity, empathy and respect for victims”, he condemned.