| Abstract [eng] |
Analysis of the literature showed that violence against children remains a widely spread problem, however there is a lack of research on violence against children by children. According to the official statistics of violence in Lithuania, the magnitude of violence against children by children is unknown due to the absence of data on perpetrators. Analysis of the official but not public data, retrospective analysis of 1422 cases of history in hospital, data from surveys of 1525 employees from educational and 320 employees from healthcare institutions revealed big disparities in such violence from 45.1 to 93.7 per cent. It was found a high discrepancy in the statistics between offenses and violence against children in the official statistics: there were higher offensive acts against children than the number of registered violent cases. This reveals the lack of cooperation between institutions and possible gap in organising the adequate help for victims. This work discovered the peculiarities of violence against children by children and differences from violence when perpetrators were adults or from general violence. It was found from surveys that more than one fifth of respondents either seldom or never report cases of violence against children to the authorities while the major cause for under-reporting is not being sure of whether an act of violence against children. The results of this research revealed the evident link between the level of knowledge on violence and the number of reports of violence. Generated practical recommendations covered issues on registration of acts of violence, institutional cooperation, necessity to create methodology on evaluation of psychological violence, importance of children employment. |
