How to Promovate Domestic Violence Prevention

To be effective, any intervention that eliminates a cause must start from the roots of the phenomenon. It was found that the kind of interventions of 'family preservation' or settlement of the conflict put more emphasis on the family as a whole and less on the individual’s welfare and so, the priority becomes public peace and less the individual security. Gradually, all victims will no longer believe in the ability of the system to protect them. So, the most effective interventions are the ones that focus on securing and protecting the individual, the victim.

Domestic violence is known as any harmful act, physically or emotionally that occurs between family members. Abuse within a family can take many forms: verbal abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, any denial of access to financial resources, isolation from friends and family, threats and attacks and in some cases can lead to the death of one partner. Preventing domestic violence or any kind of family abuse is reached through a set of policies, measures, techniques, outside the criminal justice, aimed at reducing the incidence of various types of aggressive behaviors resulting in harm to family and society, regarded as unlawful.

There are several ways of domestic violence prevention. The primary prevention refers to actions, programs, campaigns addressed to a wider population, nationwide, city and county aimed at raising awareness and reducing their tolerance to violence. For example, street posters, in means of transportation, television and audio campaigns in newspapers, magazines, videos with high resonance and impact through message, especially the visual kind. Messages must be clear, precise, short, targeted, understandable, adapted to the culture of the peoples concerned. The secondary form of prevention is aimed at high risk groups to show a certain behavior or victimization risk groups such as children and adolescents living in families with violence, women unemployed or with low incomes and dependent on someone, unemployed children risk of dropping out of school, single mothers and so on. A third form of prevention refers to actions of groups already affected by domestic violence such as female victims, family perpetrators or abused children. We are talking about relapse prevention, sanction or recovery of aggressors, victim’s security, their recovery, treatment effects and consequences.