THE STATEMENT OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE ROMANIAN CRIMINAL CODE OF 1865
THE STATEMENT OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE ROMANIAN CRIMINAL CODE OF 1865

Summary/Abstract: The notion of domestic violence, as resulted from Art 3 of the modified Law No217/2003, refers to those forms of physical, psychical, verbal, social or spiritual violence committed by a family member against another member of the same family, which causes or may cause a prejudice or physical, psychical, sexual, emotional or psychological sufferance, including the threat with such actions, the constraint or arbitrary deprivation of freedom; according to Art 3 Para 2 of the same normative act, it represents the domestic violence and preventing the women from exercising their rights and fundamental freedoms. In the context of the same law, the notion of family member shall include the blood relatives up to the 4th degree including, the spouse, but also ex-spouses, as well as the concubines and the persons developing relationships similar to those between parents and children, if they cohabitate. In the framework drafted by the Law No 217/2003 modified in 2014, the protection of domestic relations according to the above-mentioned information, shall be made through civil means, namely by the establishment of the protection order. The actual Criminal Code(2014) has limited the area of the family relations protected by penal means, only to physical violence(Art 199-200 of the new Criminal Code); regarding the notion of family member, according to Art177 of the new Criminal Code, it refers to all categories of persons mentioned by the Law No317/2003 modified (2014), except the ex-spouses. As it was shown in other studies on the same theme, at the level of the Council of Europe’s Member States, the nature of the protection means regarding the domestic violence are different in each state, which can be: of civil, penal or administrative nature; also, the notion of domestic violence has different meanings and connotations depending on the experience of each people (being labelled domestic violence, gender based violence or violence against women etc.), while the area of the persons protected by the law varies in each state (having the possibility to include the ex-spouses or concubines, even if they do not cohabitate). In this kaleidoscopic context, the study of the regulations on different forms of domestic violence, starting with our first penal regulations shall emphasize both the real ancestral existing problems in the Romanian society between family members, but also the possible solutions for the future. In this context it is enlisted our approach in studying these regulations, which can nowadays be framed in the notion of domestic violence, existent in the Romanian Criminal Code of 1865, our first criminal code, in a modern interpretation.

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