According to our study, CV cases concern more frequently boys, especially adolescents, and DV affects equally both sexes. DV frequency was at comparable levels with a Netherlands study, whilst CV cases were significantly less [12]. This finding may suggest that CV, especially youth violence, occur less frequently or is reported less frequently to the Police in Greece than in other countries.

Physical violence was the most common mechanism that perpetrator(s) employed, which is in accordance with other studies [5,12]. According to an American study, injuries inflicted by weapon(s) were less frequent in girls than boys and were recorded only in CV incidents [13]. This finding probably means that DV perpetrators (mostly parents) employ just physical violence (by use of body parts) as punishment and disciplinary measures.

Another finding of our study was the smaller frequency of prior examination by a clinician for DV inci-dents, compared to CV frequency. Clinicians, especially pediatricians, can and should play an important role in the early diagnosis of abuse and victimization, especially in the domestic context. According to Joseph, et al. [14], boys admitted at emergency departments (EDs) were more likely to be DV victims than their female counterparts. Our results do not confirm this finding. Furthermore, according to our results, head was the predominant site of injury, which is in accordance to another Greek study [5]. Nevertheless, the latter depicts only male victims of CV, in contrast to other studies that reported head injuries in child abuse incidents more frequently [5,14]. These findings could possibly suggest a selection bias, as our study included forensic population (after allegations for inter-personal violence), whilst the studied populations by Joseph, et al. [14] and Petridou, et al. [5] represented patients admitted at EDs.

According to a UK study 65.6% of assaults were recorded only on EDs, 23.6% were reported only to the Police, and only 10.8% were reported both to EDs and the Police. Furthermore only 1 or 2 out of 10 minors have reported their victimization to both a police officer and a clinician, as up to 60-70% had mentioned the incident only at EDs [15]. These findings suggest that future research should combine records from EDs, forensic departments and the police department, to ascertain the true extent of minors’ victimization which seek medical care or judicial support.

Our study demonstrated that most DV and CV adolescent victims sustained injuries, suggesting that they are in greater danger of getting injured than younger children, especially than children at the preschool development stage. Furthermore, upper limbs injuries could possibly become a screening tool for domestic abuse in school-age children and adolescents, whilst trunk injuries could imply domestic abuse in preschool children, but these results should be verified by future large scale community studies.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in Greece that compared minors’ victimization in the community and the domestic context. High incidence and prevalence of exposure to physical violence (both domestic and community) reported by Petroulaki, et al. [6] compared to allegation rates in our Department suggest that minors’ victimization is underreported in Greece. Campaigns about child abuse and youth violence are needed, to eliminate or at least reduce these phenomena.

Ethics clearance: Ethics Committee of the Medical School of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; No. 5836 dated February 2, 2015.

Contributors: KK: concept and design of the study, collection, and interpretation of the data, drafting the article and revised it critically for important intellectual content; ES: Interpretation of the data, drafting the article and revised it critically for important intellectual content; EZ: analysis and interpretation of the data, revising the article critically for important intellectual content; AT,NG,DV, SP: concept and design of the study, drafting the article and revised it critically for important intellectual content; CS: concept and design of the study, drafting the article and revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors approved the final version of manuscript, and agreed to be accountable for all aspects related to the study.

Funding: None; Competing interest: None stated.

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