A.T., 20 years-old from Lipjan, is one of several girls in Kosovo who have been sexually assaulted in the street. She was 17 years old when she was first assaulted in the street near the dental clinic in Lipjan by a 50-year-old man, who offered her money for sexual favors.
She didn`t tell anyone about this because she had no courage.
She faced another assault a couple of months ago, when she was going home from the faculty and the person who assaulted her even showed his genital organs to her.
“The dusk had fallen and I was walking home when I heard some steps approaching me speedily. At the turn of the road I heard the words: ‘turn around, look what I got for you.’ Since I was near my house I knew it was somebody I know. I turned my head and I saw he was my neighbor`s son, he was younger than me and he was touching his genital organ,” she explains.
Again she could not tell this to anyone, but since this assault was repeated, as she says, initially she spoke to her parents and they went to talk to the parents of the abuser.
“Now he goes on another way when he sees me,” she says, “and when it happens to meet him, I don`t even look at his face.”
As a result of psychological pressure, she is not able to walk home alone. A member of her family has to walk her home from the bus station.
She did not go at the police station since, according to her, she did not believe the case would be solved. She thought the case would not take it into consideration.
Adelina Berisha from the Kosovo Women`s Network, who did a research paper on sexual assaults in Kosovo in 2015, said that 64.1% of women and 32.5% of men in Kosovo have gone through several forms of sexual assault in their life.
“The lack of reporting sexual assault comes is due to the lack of citizen`s knowledge of sexual assault. Also, the citizens do not know where they should send their complaints. Public and private institutions have not specified where one can report sexual assaults within those institutions. Also, we have noticed that the lack of defining sexual assault in the criminal code has often made it impossible for the citizens to get the needed help by the police when they reported the sexual assault,” Berisha said.
What exactly is “sexual assault?”
This is the definition according to Kosovo`s Law for Gender Equality, Article 3: “Any kind of unwanted verbal, non-verbal, or physical behavior of sexual nature, aimed at affecting or insulting one`s dignity and creating a scary, hostile, degrading, humiliating or insulting environment, is considered sexual assault. Sexual assault can be part of or can lead to other forms of violence, such as sexual attack or rape. Sexual violence may include physical and psychological violence.”
“Ec shlirë” (walk freely) phone application has been launched a year ago by Kosovo Women`s Network and is being widely used, Berisha says, and there have been over 360 citizens who reported cases of sexual assault.
According to Kosovo Police (KP), over 51 such cases have been reported during 2016, and these cases have been sent to the justice offices.
Liridona Jemini-Gashi who is a psychologist, says that the causes of sexual harassment happen are related to the culture and values in society, and that the person who has been harassed may experienced problems during her life.
“The victims of sexual harassment usually go through serious psychological effects, which are usually manifested with anxiety, depression, headache, sleep disorders, loosing or gaining weight, self-esteem decrease and sexual dysfunction. It also costs them in their work: losing their job, ‘losing their morale,’ less job satisfaction, broken work relationships, etc…” Jemini-Gashi said.
Jeta Berisha, from “Artpolis,” says that people in our society still are unable to make a distinction between sexual harassment and flirting.
Also, women who get harassed are thought to have encouraged the harassment.
“People in Kosovo think that women create problems for themselves by wearing provocative clothes, but each of us has the right to wear whatever we wish. I do not feel comfortable when our society keeps teaching girls to be calm and be a man`s property, this is one of the biggest mistakes that our society makes. Girls start stereotyping themselves. Apart from being judged by the others, they also judge themselves,” Berisha said.
According to the Women`s Network, the harassment in the street seems to be one of the most common forms of sexual harassment in Kosovo. Harassment mostly comes by unknown people, but also by those who are known, such as friends, work colleagues, teachers, employers and work partners.
In cases when there is sexual harassment, most of people are prone to ignore it by not reporting it.
Also, according to the abovementioned report, some representatives of the institutions still are not aware of sexual harassment, its definition and the respective law. Sexual harassment is usually misunderstood as rape or sexual attack, whereas “less serious” forms of sexual harassment are either unknown or are considered to be not as important.
Besarta Breznica
