Centre for Assistance and Counselling for Domestic Violence Perpetrators, Drochia — Moldova's Only Active Community Perpetrator Programme, Growing but Starved of Referrals

The Centre for Assistance and Counselling for Domestic Violence Perpetrators in Drochia, northern Moldova, opened in 2012 as the first specialised counselling centre for domestic abusers in the country, working with the NGO Artemida and modelled on the US Duluth approach; similar centres later opened in Chisinau, Causeni and Ocnita, but most NGO-run programmes have since closed. Participants are mostly referred by probation services or ordered to attend by courts issuing protection orders, though voluntary referral through social workers or police is also possible.
A 2025 UNFPA-commissioned analysis by the European Network for the Work with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence (WWP EN), prepared with the National Probation Inspectorate and National Penitentiary Administration, found that by 2024 Drochia was the only city with an active community counselling programme. Enrolment rose from 55 (2021) to 64 (2022), 96 (2023) and 135 in the first nine months of 2024; across all providers (prison, probation, community) 155 men attended in 2022 and 193 in 2023. In the community programme, 75% (2022) and 78% (2023) of men completed it, with 22% and 16% dropping out. The centre's state budget was 773.6 thousand lei in 2021, 846.5 thousand in 2022, 709.5 thousand in 2023 and 700.0 thousand in 2024.
The programme also exposes system-level weaknesses. Only about 4% of the 2,232 (2022) and 2,144 (2023) people convicted of domestic violence under probation were referred to a perpetrator programme; police court recommendations for mandated programmes covered 2-3%. Professionals attributed this mainly to the lack of available programmes. Prisons and probation have no earmarked budget for such work, and the penitentiary programme is 13 one-hour sessions over three months, shorter than the six-month minimum in European standards.
Evidence is explicitly limited: completion and attendance are tracked, but the analysis notes that high completion may or may not translate into changed violent behaviour, and no independent outcome or reoffending evaluation was found. The case is useful as an honest example of a small, state-funded, Istanbul Convention Article 16 programme that works with a coherent curriculum but is under-resourced and under-referred.

Read the full analysis: https://moldova.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/2025-02/Analysis%20of%20perpetrator%20programmes%20in%20Moldova%20FIN.pdf