Family violence : the perpetrator's and victim's perspective in cases of sexual offences

Abstract

Family violence is a highly complex legal notion that involves socio-moral implications within the international legal dimension. It is one of the most pervasive of human rights violation as it impedes on equality and the right to enjoy fundamental freedoms, cutting across boundaries of culture, class and ethnicity. Sexual abuse is one of the most persistent forms of family violence. This refers to the use of forcible manipulation in order to inflict sexual contact upon the victim. Taking into account the dynamics of a family, such sexual offences may constitute either IPSV or child exploitation.

From a legislative perspective, family violence and sexual offences are regarded as two autonomous offences, albeit sexual offences perpetrated by a family member do impose an aggravation of punishment. Nonetheless, this paper expounds theoretical viewpoints such as perceptions of public policy, the conviction of the offender and reactions to victimization which suggest that the correlation between these offences is undeniably more conspicuous than what the law envisages.

The consequential effects on both the perpetrator and the victim shall be perceived through an analytic assessment of existing procedural measures as well as the proposed measures in the Bill enabling Malta to ratify the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence inter alia. This intends to facilitate increased awareness in this area and will be beneficial in further improving the investigative process, prosecution and conviction of the offender.

Ultimately such meticulous analysis of the position of the parties in light of the intersections between the family violence and sexual offences, emphasizes the fact that this notion is multi-layered as it embraces not only legal issues but also social, cultural, moral and psychological issues. Hence, this paper through a proactive approach aims to present a set of further constructive improvements – both legislative and non-legislative.