The 20 - year - old man's confession of constant violence

Because of the sensitivity of the situation this young woman finds herself in, Radio Free Europe has not published her identity nor the location where she has had conversations with her.

She now lives in one of the ten safe houses in Kosovo, which mainly house victims of domestic violence.

This phenomenon has also recently sparked protests organised by civil society in Kosovo. The last such violence case was marked in August in a village of Gjakova, where a man killed his 40-year-old wife and 9-year-old daughter.
The 20-year-old woman still talks about her experiences, reports the REL. It tells how her ex-husband kept her locked up in the house without any means of communication with the outside world...

We were dating each other. By then, our relationships were different, and we were happy. We decided to get married, but with the arrangement I'm going to continue my schooling, because I loved school very much, I was an excellent student. After the wedding, everything changed”.

It explains the violence she has experienced at the time of her efforts to find understanding...

“beat me with slaps, fists, kicks, and no longer cared about my condition, whether I'm alvanated or what happened to me”

It also speaks of the lack of support that authorities in the order or even her own family may have offered.

Whenever I went to the police, I was persuaded to return to him and I was told that these things would never happen again.
Her family said that they would accept her back home, but without her little child, which she refused to do.

According to official data, last year there were 1269 cases of domestic violence, of which women were mainly victims.
Meanwhile, during this year in the January-June period, 628 cases have been recorded.
Kosovo's order authorities do not make the categories of murders that may have occurred in cases of domestic violence. Their records point to 20 murders this year, including cases of domestic violence killings.
In one of Pristina's bioborts, it writes: “even as many lost calls”
Nongovernmental organisations, meanwhile, which deal with housing and rehabilitation of domestic violence victims, say the trend in reporting cases of violence in Kosovo is on the rise.

Erblin Dinarma, who leads one of the 10 safe houses that exist in Kosovo, says her centre deals not only with housing but with rehabilitation of victims. Currently, 10 women and 9 children live in this center.
The report of women experiencing domestic violence has increased, and the need to shelter victims of violence has also increased. We've accepted 19 people, although we have less body capacity of”.

We employ all the women we live in, normally those who are capable of work. We also send the kids to school. This shelter has been operating since 2000 and it's kind of a semi-opener, so it's allowed women to move, of course, in line with what the risk rate is for them”.

Safe homes are financed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Management with 50 percent of the expenses, while the rest are financed by various donors.
And besides finances, which are occasionally limited, these houses also face another problem, the time limit that regularizes victims to live in them.

Under regulations that possess all shelters, staying in women's shelter is the first to last between 3 and 6 months. In some of these homes, it has been that because of the inefficiency of rehabilitation for such a short period of time, the victims have stayed for up to nine years in agreement with the leaders of the homes.