Medico-Legal Aspects of Family Violence Cases in Athens, Greece

Background: Various studies that have been published to date concerning the Greek population, examine family violence only from the sociological perspective while attempting to correlate it with the socio-demographic data of the perpetrator and the victim. Aims: This study makes an effort to investigate the phenomenon from the perspective of forensic clinical medicine while it simultaneously attempts to correlate the forensic data with various demographic characteristics. The data that we used in the following study came from a detailed file review of the Department of Forensic Medicine of University of Athens. Methodology: We applied a retrospective statistical analysis of 184 family violence cases that were examined during the period 1996-2010 in the Department of Forensic Medicine of University of Athens and subsequently we made a correlation of the demographic data of victims and assailants (age, marital status, occupation), with several forensic parameters (type of instrument and type of injury). Results: Besides a wide range of statistical results, the most interesting finding of this study is the correlation between the likelihood of family violence occurrence, and the socioeconomic status of victims as reflected by their occupation. The occupation of the victim and the assailant's gender were statistically significantly associated with the characterization of the injury (p = 0.026 and p = 0.023 respectively) since the victims with most serious injuries were from lower socioeconomic status, as reflected by the profession, and the fact that the victims were women abused by men (96.4%). The above conclusion acquires a special importance today, because of the poor financial situation of the Greek population.