Law gives more battered women protection

10 February 2004

MADRID – Judges have made more than 6,000 protection orders for battered women in the past five months since the law on domestic violence was strengthened,  the Judicial Services said Tuesday.

The number of orders was 6,004 , according to Spain’s Judicial Services.

The total number of protection orders now stands at 7,869.

The law was changed in August 2003 to make it easier for women to report men who were suspected of attacking them and to offer victims more protection.

But the 65 who were killed in 2003 by violent husbands or partners.

None of these was subject to a protection order.

Montserrat Comas, spokeswoman of the Judicial Services department, said the number of women killed as a result of domestic violence had risen by  45 percent between 2003 and the previous year.

In 2002,  45 women died in violent incidents whereas this figure rose to 65 last year.

The issue of domestic violence has become an important political theme in Spain, a country renowned as a ‘macho society’.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news