LNS umedo team; Credit: LNS

On Wednesday 18 October 2023, the Laboratoire National de Santé (LNS) and its collaborative partners took stock of the umedo service during a roundtable discussion, marking its fifth anniversary.

The LNS has been providing the umedo service (available at umedo.lu) since 2018. This service is designed to assist adult victims of physical and/or sexual violence who have their cases documented but initially refrain from filing a formal complaint. The roundtable session, attended by LNS, project collaborators and victim support organisations, served as a platform for reviewing the first five years of umedo and assessing its current status.

Umedo offers victims of violence the opportunity to undergo examinations at LNS or at affiliated hospitals by appointment, allowing the documentation and secure storage of physical assault evidence for up to a decade. This includes visible injuries as well as biological traces. To ensure optimal care for victims of violence, the umedo team comprises qualified medical professionals with expertise in handling such injuries and supporting victims.

Martine Schaul, who is responsible for umedo at LNS, described the service as an opportunity to encourage victims to take a first step towards breaking free from the spiral of violence: "In Luxembourg, too, physical violence is an issue that often takes place in secret. Many victims of violence still hesitate to file a complaint. With umedo, we offer them access to help that initially has no legal consequences. Only when the victim explicitly requests it, his or her dossier is forwarded to the judiciary. Until then, people at least know that their case is documented and can be retrieved at any time of their own free will. This gives many people the courage to take appropriate steps against the perpetrators at any time".

The number of people who ultimately decide to take legal action is still rather low, as Dr Thorsten Schwark, Head of Forensic Medicine at LNS, emphasised: "In only about 20% of all cases are the relevant documents ultimately requested by the victim. This shows that we are still dealing with a subject that is a taboo in our societies, which shows even more the need for the umedo concept. With umedo, we create an objective basis for possible legal steps, which, however, are not mandatory. Thus, we give the victim the chance to take legal action, if that is the preferred option and the feeling that she or he can find her or his own way out of the spiral of violence."

For Prof Dr André Rosenthal, Director ad interim of LNS, umedo stands as a cornerstone of the initiative's core principles: "At LNS, we are committed to professional excellence in all the diagnostic services we provide to the people of Luxembourg on a daily basis. This applies to all departments and services and to every employee - and in a very special way to umedo. […] We are also helped in this by our partners from the health and justice sectors, as well as the police and other aid organisations with whom we have linked up with umedo in the nationwide aid network over the past five years."