An observational study of domestic violence in Greece during COVID-19 through police records: The profile of heinous crimes between nuclear and extended family relationships

Abstract

Abstract In Greece, the frequency of serious crimes within families has been alarmingly high during COVID-19; nonetheless, no study has systematically investigated this subject at a national level. The current study aims to estimate the crime rates of family violence across the country and explore the profile of perpetrators and victims based on their sociodemographic characteristics and relationship status. Out of 372 crime cases reported to the Hellenic Police during 2020–2021, the highest crime rate is observed in the geographical area of the Ionian Sea with 13.45 per 100,000 population. Overall, there were 372 perpetrators with 89.5% of them being males and 386 victims with 83.6% of them being females. The majority of both groups (perpetrators and victims) were Greek, whereas the prevalent age group for perpetrators was 46–60 (31.2%), and for victims was 36–45 (28.5%). Nuclear relatives outnumbered the extended ones regarding all groups of family violence crimes; however, there were no statistically significant differences. Lastly, our multivariate regression model indicated that the likelihood for Greeks to commit sexual abuse instead of rape was 3.27 times greater than immigrants. Younger perpetrators were 0.30 times less likely than elders to murder a relative rather than rape them, whereas they were 10,833,846.63 times more likely than elders to severely injure a victim as opposed to rape them.