Seventeen protection orders filed by domestic abuse victims were broken in the span of ten months this year, Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said in Parliament on Tuesday.

Replying to a question by Nationalist Party MP Graziella Attard Previ, Camilleri explained that there had been 17 recorded cases where protection orders issued in domestic violence cases had been broken between January and October 2022.

Protection orders are issued by a court and seek to ensure the safety of an injured party from an aggressor while the latter is being tried in court. 

Of the 17 such orders violated between January and October, 16 were violated by men while the remaining case was broken by a woman. 

While two cases have been closed, the other 15 are still going through court procedures.

The parliamentary question comes weeks after Bernice Cassar was murdered just days after she had reported her estranged husband for threatening her, breaching a protection order. 

Police had not yet acted on that report when Cassar was killed. 

Cassar's husband, Roderick Cassar, is being tried for the crime in what is Malta’s first case of willful femicide – an aggravated version of the homicide offence. 

The concept was introduced into local criminal law earlier this year, as a result of amendments sparked by the violent murder of Paulina Dembska in Sliema on New Year’s Day. 

Under the new law, judges are encouraged to dole out harsher sentences for murders committed with "femicidal intent". Defendants in such cases can no longer argue that they committed the crime out of "passion".