School violence and violence in family
ARTINOPOULOU V.
Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Dept. of Psychology

Juveniles' victimization in contemporary Greece seems not to be different from other countries. It is the 15% of girls and 12% of boys that have been abused during their childhood and/or adolescence. One out of four girls and nine out of ten boys have not ever speak about their victimization. One out of 25 girls and one out of 33 boys are victims of family sexual abuse (attempted rape is also included), while one out of two offenders is known to the victim. Eight out of ten times the child has been experienced repeated sexual abuse¹. The effects of victimization vary from psychological disorders to depression, from law self-esteem to suicide attempts, from social deviance to drug addiction.

In the school environment the question is if the school bears violence itself, or the social violence is reproduced through the school environment. I would agree that both hypotheses are true, depending on the social and cultural context, the quality of pedagogical process and the school climate as well. Normally, there is a continuous role's exchange between victims of bullying and school violence offenders. Although we are very skeptical about using the terms "victims" and "offenders" when referring to juveniles, we can see these terms to be used in the relative literature².

We are aware that violence is reproduced from family to school and society and vice versa through an interactive process. We need the interdisciplinary approaches in order to understand the qualitative aspects of these types of violence and to diagnose the impact of risk factors of juveniles' victimization.

The profile of juvenile offenders of penal law in Greece as it is comes from social and criminological research findings is described as male (97%), aged from 14 to 17 years old, coming from law socio economic level, with poor family relationships, mostly drug addict of regularly user of drugs, dropped out from school, or with poor academic performance. During the past years, we see a small but continuous increase in assaults, robberies and drug offences committed from juveniles. In the context of prevention³, we have to notice that intervention concerning children and juveniles must be prompt (general prevention), minimum (preventing the social stigma of the juvenile and their families) and appropriate (involving well educated professionals in similar cases).

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¹For the details contact to the Children's Health Institute, Greece.
²Artinopoulou, Vasso. School violence. Research and Policies in Europe. Metaixmio Editions, Athens 2001, (in greek).
³Artinopoulou, Vasso, Women's family abuse. Editions Nomiki Bibliothiki, Athens 2006, (in greek).