Referral of Nearly Ten Thousand Domestic Violence Cases to Forensic Medicine in Tehran in Six Months

According to the latest statistics from Masoud Ghadi Pasha, the director general of forensic medicine in Tehran province, in the first six months of 2016, 224 cases of child abuse and 9,499 cases of domestic violence have been referred to this center. Mr. Ghadi Pasha presented these statistics on Thursday, November 17, in an interview with the Iranian Labor News Agency, ILNA, but did not provide details about these cases. Based on these statistics, more than one case of child abuse and over 52 cases of domestic violence are referred to forensic medicine in Tehran every day. Habibollah Masoudi, the deputy of the Welfare Organization, had previously announced that out of 650,000 calls to the social emergency service last year, 150,000 calls were related to the activities of this emergency service, and 8.5 percent of these calls were related to child abuse. According to this data, last year there were 12,500 calls, meaning more than 34 calls daily to the social emergency service regarding child abuse in Iran. In recent months, reports of child abuse have been published in Iranian media. For instance, in November, following reports of abuse of a three-year-old girl named Setayesh in Rafsanjan, Kerman province, Mahmoud Heydari, the head of the Welfare Organization in Rafsanjan, stated that there were "signs of bruising, wounds, and cigarette burns on the girl's body." Hamid Malanouri, the governor of Rafsanjan, also announced that the child's mother has been arrested and an arrest warrant has been issued for her father, who is on the run. Some analysts cite poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, and the presence of violence in society as reasons for child abuse in Iran. Meanwhile, Hossein Ahmadi, a lawyer, wrote in a note on Thursday in the ISNA news agency that "unfortunately, many people perceive child abuse merely as beating to the point of death, whereas any behavior or action by adults that causes psychological, emotional, or physical harm to a child is considered child abuse." November 19, which corresponds to November 28, is the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse and the Prohibition of Violence Against Children. The statistics provided by the director general of forensic medicine in Tehran regarding domestic violence are significantly higher than previously reported figures by government officials. Mr. Ghadi Pasha reported the referral of 9,499 cases to forensic medicine in the first six months of this year, which is more than 52 cases per day. This statistic comes at a time when officials from the Welfare Organization in previous years reported about 25 or 30 daily calls to the social emergency service regarding domestic violence across Iran. According to Habibollah Masoudi, six percent of the calls to the social emergency service last year, or 9,000 calls, were related to domestic violence, which, when calculated, shows that more than 24 calls daily to the national social emergency service were made regarding domestic violence. According to statistics, most cases of domestic violence are perpetrated by men, and about three percent of domestic violence cases are committed by women.