"Someone can't just hit you and claim to love you"
For all the students who filled the classroom, this is a long accepted, unquestionable rule. Yesterday they also learned how this rule is reflected in domestic violence legislation.
With the kind hospitality of the director and teachers from the 37th secondary school "Raina Knyaginya" in Sofia, on December 11, 2023, RTP and the Bulgarian Chamber of Investigators organized an informational meeting with students from 9 to 11 grades. Our goal was to find out what the students of a Sofia school, with mostly Roma children, think and know about this increasingly serious and increasingly visible problem in our society. By the end of the meeting, our skepticism had successfully turned into optimism: they were aware of many common myths about domestic violence (e.g. that if someone hits you, it is an expression of love, that men cannot be victims of violence, that it it only happens in poor families...). Equally important, they were also extremely inquisitive and wanted to know more from the investigators, who explained specific cases involving domestic violence and outlined the steps to report the crime when it occurred.
This meeting is part of the information campaign under the PROTECT project.