Abstract
The research report responds to the situation regarding persons at risk of domestic violence in times of pandemic and especially in times of state of emergency. It is designed as an exploratory qualitative research, which maps the situation through the analysis of 70 cases documented by helping organizations in the period March - June 2020, followed by semi-structured interviews with workers of these organizations, long-term clients, and then with representatives of the Police of the Czech Republic, OSPOD (Department of Social and Legal Protection of Children), attorneys, lawyers, and judges.
Using triangulation, the analysis maps both the breakpoints that cause the high latency of this phenomenon and, subsequently, the so-called meshes in the network that are the reason why a large proportion of cases are not identified as domestic violence and, therefore, not adequately addressed. The most important finding is the detailed description of the inconsistencies in the functioning of the entire aid system caused by the fragmentation of care, the lack of definition of the phenomenon under study across institutions, and the profound differences in the interpretation of what violence is and what it is not across the system.
The study also includes a set of recommendations for individual departments.