Domestic violence is getting more aggressive and increasingly hits children too, Diana Videva, board member and founder of the Demetra Association, told a news conference in Burgas. Children, she said, are no longer just witnesses — they are direct victims of the abuse.

The Centre for the Prevention of Violence and Crime in Burgas takes in between 250 and 300 victims a year. Most who come for help are women aged 20 to 40. The centre also files their requests for protection orders, but it has too few staff to take on many more cases.

Every year in Bulgaria, 20 to 25 women are killed because of their gender, most often by a current or former partner, Videva said. Police record only two cases as femicide, because Bulgarian law has no such term. There is no official count — civil society groups gather the data themselves from media reports.

Caring for their children is one reason women stay with an abuser, Videva said. Others include fear, trauma, controlling behaviour, social isolation, money troubles and lack of support. She also pointed to what she called Stockholm syndrome — a psychological dependence on the abuser — to explain why women go back and withdraw their complaints. A complaint can only be withdrawn after three days.

Alcohol, drugs, gambling and clashing personalities are among the main causes of conflict. Some victims drop their cases because they are afraid to face their abuser in court.

The authorities respond poorly, Videva said — help is slow to arrive in emergencies, and there are no safe shelters.

The most worrying change, she said, is the amendment to the Family Code that took effect on 30 December last year, bringing in shared parenting. By law it is meant to be voluntary, but in practice it gets forced through even in violence cases. That, she said, has opened a "Pandora's box" — children are handed to an abusive parent, conflicts get worse, and mothers are afraid to report abuse because they are threatened with losing their children.

Experts want courts to be required to check the risk of violence before ruling on shared parenting, and for children's life and health to come before equal parental rights. To back their case, they point to children killed by their father after the mother repeatedly filed and then withdrew complaints out of fear.

The risk check is already written into the rules for applying the law and should also be carried out by the court, Videva said.

Bulgaria must bring in the EU directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence by April 2027 — Directive (EU) 2024/1385 — which will require changes to a number of laws. A national information system is also meant to be running by then, though work on it has now stalled. It would collect anonymised data on cases and protection orders and allow the kind of risk check that is missing today, because information currently gets lost between different agencies.

On 7 December, Burgas will host a closed debate on why women who have survived domestic violence stay in the relationship for so long and don't seek help sooner, with a focus on the psychological toll. Staff from the crisis centre will take part, along with women who have lived through abuse or know others who have. The debate is part of the national "Sustainable Local Communities for Women's Health" initiative, backed by the Swiss-Bulgarian Cooperation Programme.