While the victims of sexual crimes often feel powerless to fight back, there are a few things they can do to try to battle the problem, Slovak police said.
Reporting the crime is an important first step. Women should also try to remember the exact appearance of the culprit, so the police can create a sketch and try to identify him, said the head of the Bratislava Investigative Department, who asked that his name be withheld.
If the police manage to apprehend the suspect, first-time offenders face a fine and repeat offenders could face a maximum sentence of three years in prison, he said.
Concerning obscene phone calls, Pavol Bojňanský, product and services manager for Slovenské Telekomunikácie (ST), said the company offers two services which can help.
The first is the ISDN line, in which the number of most callers is displayed on a screen built into the telephone. The second is a service called 'Malicious Caller Identification.'" Both are available from any ST branch office.
The ISDN line is flawed, however, as it only works for calls originating from a digital line and is expensive - the flat monthly rate is 1,000 Slovak crowns.
The better option is 'Malicious Caller Identification', which works with all incoming calls and is relatively inexpensive [8 crowns per day]. The service records the phone numbers of all the customer's incoming calls. When recieving an obscene call, Bojňanský said, the customer can report it to ST, along with the time of the incident, at which time ST has the legal obligation to contact the offender and issue a warning.
ST will not give the customer the offender's number. "But," he added, "if the police ask for the number and location of the caller, we must give it to them."
