NEWS
FIGHTING
SEXUAL VIOLENCE - A SWEDISH EXPERIENCE
FROM: "Sterner,
Gunilla" gunilla.sterner@ab.lst.se
of Operation Kvinnofrid International
Gunilla works
for OKI at the County Administrative Board of Stockholm as
chief of the Division for Gender Equality, she talks of her
work and that of Operation Kvinnofrid for whom she is a co-ordinator.
" It
all started with cooperation in Stockholm County between police,
healthcare, social assistants and the women shelters to be better
off to help women and children who suffered from men's violence.
The women shelters, around 20 here in this County, have lots
of knowledge about what was needed but the authorities did little
to help. As I saw it, it was an issue reflecting the power structures
of society in which male dominance and female subordinance is
the common pattern I refuse to talk about domestic violence which
give
a picture of equal persons. We have a lot of rapes by present
or former husbands and violence towards women often ends with
sexual
violence. But we also have problems with sexual violence from
unknown
men and boys, gangrapes of young girls, a hard language in schools
where girls are called bad names like whore etc.
"We
started with this cooperation between authorities and made training
programmes for policemen, healthcare people in hospitals, social
assistants based on knowledge from womens shelters.We set up
multi-agency groups in most of the municipalities to make the
different
authorities cooperate to give the women better service. And
we pointed out that it is the reponsibility of society and
the authorities to make this problem visible, to defeat these
crimes, to help the women in the best ways and explain that
it is not their fault and they should not feel guilty, there
is always help to get. We begged for money to make campaigns
to raise the common awareness of people. The first campaign
had only women in the pictures and the message was to make mens
violence towards women visible and to say loudly that it is a
crime.
" In
the second campaign we had only men in the pictures of our posters
and the theme was violence towards women is mens responsibility.
Our governor was in one poster looking very serious and saying
"A real man does not hit women." And the chief of the
police
was in another picture saying" A hit to one woman is a crime
to
all women".They are both deeply devoted to this work which
explains
some of our success.We have got good legitimacy by having the
heads of the authorities in our steering group.The steering committee
consists of the Governor, the chief of the police, and the
heads of ten of the most important authorities like the public
prosecution authority, the prison and probation administration,the
integration office, crime prevention council, and the health
and welfare and the city of Stockholm and the other municipalities
in the county.
"We
have made a lot of information materials and distributed to schools,
hospitals,doctors, police, taxidrivers, socialcare and other public
institutions and we sent out information to schools to education
young girls in self defence and to talk seriously with boys.
Our services are very popular.We don't have special money for
this
but try to work within the authorities and together with the NGOs..
We have worked together since 1997 and we have had some good feedback
even though the problems still are big.Today we also work together
with programmes for rehabilitation of men and we think more focus
must be put on how to actually stop men from doing this.But the
safety
of women must always be prioritised. Society must offer women
safe
space in their homes and on the streets.
"
The City of Stockholm has set up a center for raped women this
year besides the old one for women in crisis and they have
a good action programme and spend a lot of money in this issue."
- Gunilla Sterner, Stockholm, Sweden
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