Today, Eka (26) has three children but her psychologist Manana Songulashvili said her psycho-trauma has not cured yet. Three years ago she, as a victim of domestic violence, applied to the National Network of Protection from Violence.

RAPE – A CONTINUEUS TRAUMA 
Eka, her name is changed in this article, cannot share her problem with anybody. The abuser is her neighbor and husband’s friend. So, he often visits their house.

Eka’s case is particularly grave and her rehabilitation was too difficult for the psychologist because of age and level of her trauma.

Manana Songulashvili admitted that it is beyond her competence to cope with Eka’s trauma and tries to forward the beneficiary to another specialist (psychiatrist) but the victim stubbornly disagrees with it.

More than half of the interviewed women in the frame of research of the National Network of Protection from Violence became victims of sexual violence under age of 18, but they cannot realize the trauma received from the violence until they get consultation from psychologist.

Specialists say beneficiaries almost never apply to them because of sexual violence and women start to realize it when they speak about physical or psychological violence.

Psychologist of the Organization Manana Songulashvili said that 22 % of their beneficiaries are victims of sexual violence “though women do not speak about it at the beginning and it is exposed only after several meetings.”

LACK OF DATA FROM GEORGIA
UN statistics about quantitative index of rape in 63 countries do not contain data from Georgia.

According to the organization, 19 and 25 registered cases of rape were observed in the neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan relatively in 2009; number of similar cases is a bit more than 6 000 in Russia.

According to the information of the Supreme Court of Georgia 48 cases of rape were officially registered at the court in the same year in Georgia.

However, the highest number was observed in 2008 and 2011 and it amounted to 53 each year.

Total 170 cases of sexual crimes were registered at the courts from 2008 up to now and most of them were committed against underage people.

SECUAL VIOLNCE – TABOO IN THE SOCIATY

Human rights defenders admit that sexual violence is much tabooed topic in Georgia and this crime is rarely exposed to the society.

Khatuna Kunchulia, coordinator of the UN Women cross- regional program – Women Connect Across Conflict:
“There is stigma in Georgia and people do not speak about it. Similar situation was during the war too. People said they had witnessed rape facts but nobody spoke about themselves to be victims of sexual abuse.”

Ana Arganashvili, Head of Center for Children and Women’s Rights of the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia:
“Notifications about sexual violence in the context of domestic violence are not made. The first problem is that this problem is still tabooed in the society. Apparently, it requires additional preparation and awareness raising.”

GEORGIAN LEGISLATION LOYAL TO SEXUAL VIOLENCE
Despite the gravity of the problem, Georgian legislation is too loyal towards this problem and maximum punishment for the rape crime is 6 years.

The punishment is burdened only if the victim is juvenile and the abuser is punished by imprisonment from 15 up to 20 years.

Tbilisi City Court has discussed 100 cases of sexual violence for the last six years and passed guilty verdict on 97 cases of it.

The lack of statistic is clarified by the fact that case proceeding practice is too complicated and grave for the victims of sexual violence.

Human Rights Center’s lawyer Nestan Londaridze speaks about negative practice.
“Georgian law is very loyal in this field. It is grave crime and very often victim faces psychic problems and it might negatively impact their entire life. I think the law is too loyal when they impose minor punishment on the perpetrator or release them under plea-agreement."

"In addition to that, practice neglects protection of rights of victims of sexual violence. Their anonymity is often violated and often become targets of huge psychic oppression so at the end they prefer to drop case proceeding. Besides that, attitude of investigative bodies towards victims is often ironic and finally these cases are placed on shelves.”

Public Defender of Georgia also pays attention to the shortcomings in the activities of law enforcement bodies in its 2010 report and states that “police has authority to draw up deterrent orders in case of domestic violence mostly in case of psychic, economic violence and sometimes in case of coerce but not in case of physical or sexual violence.”

Lela Tsiskarishvili, Director of the Georgian Center for Rehabilitation of Torture Victims [GCRT], speaks about ineffective law on domestic violence:

“The law on domestic violence does not work effectively because if we review the statistics, since 2007 to present only 1 000 calls were registered and the number is too low.”

GAPS IN DOMESTIC LAW

Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence is the first obligatory instrument in the world and creates consistent legal frame for the prevention of violence, protection of victims and combating impunity of violators.

Georgian parliament has not ratified this convention yet. However, the work has started in this direction and a working group was set up to ensure compliance of Georgian law with the convention.

The purpose of this group is to analyze the acting national law on “Prevention and Combating of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence” in comparison with the CoE convention and draft relevant legislative amendments for the harmonization with Istanbul Convention.

“The convention protects not only from sexual violence but from all forms of violence including psychic, social and physical forms caused by gender inequality.

The issues of violence against women during and after conflict are particularly significant. The Convention imposes set of responsibilities on the state and in any case the women shall be protected from violence,” chairwoman of the Gender Equality Council of the Parliament of Georgia and deputy speaker of the parliament Rusudan Kervalishvili said.

Irina Japaridze, manager of UN joint program for the promotion of Gender Equality from UN Women admits harmonization problem of the Georgian legislation with international law.

“The main purpose of this Convention is prevention. It obliges states to properly respond to the facts of domestic violence and violence against women and ensure availability of necessary service for similar victims.

Our expert analyzed Georgian legislation in comparison with the international law and draft legislative amendments were prepared which claims that some changes shall be introduced to the Georgian law. CoE convention requests criminalization of all forms of domestic violence including sexual one.”

Despite protection mechanisms, specialists claim official statistics do not reflect real picture of this problem in any country because this crime has hidden character.

Two more significant circumstances are that society is much stricter towards victim in case of violence, and in doing so, they legitimize the violence.

“When similar incidents occur, I have often heard comments: “if she is honest woman, what she was doing in that place?!” “Why was she going there at midnight?” etc. I think, blaming victim works as self-defense. People try to find causes of violence in the victim’s behavior and calm themselves that similar incident will never happen with them,” Nana Dzneladze from the Union Sapari said.

However, the law is above all this and states that non-voluntary sexual intercourse is a criminal offense even if the woman voluntarily accompanied a man and refused to have sexual intercourse with him at the last moment but the man had forcible sexual intercourse with her. It is also noteworthy that rape crime is considered to be fulfilled even at the starting moment of the sexual intercourse.

Nino Gvedashvili