Two reports, two different houses, one pattern. In the village of Tearce near Tetovo, an 80-year-old woman reported that a relative attacked her in her own yard after an argument. In Veles, police detained an 82-year-old man for physically assaulting his wife, aged 78. Neither case will surprise anyone who reads police bulletins - but that is exactly why it is worth reading what those bulletins actually say.

In the Veles case, police slipped in one sentence that says more than the rest of the text combined: incidents of this kind had been happening over an extended period of time. So this was not one incident. This was a condition that lasted, and institutions only documented it on the day somebody finally reported it.

Both women are over 78. Both were attacked in the place that is by definition supposed to be the safest one - at home. And in both cases the system steps in after the violence has already happened, never before.

After the Veles case, the public prosecutor and the Centre for Social Work were notified, and a formal complaint will follow once the documentation is done. In Tearce, police announced that measures are being taken to clear up the case. That is the precise word - clearing up. Not protection, not prevention. Clearing up something that has already happened.

The question that remains is not whether police will file the complaint. They will. The question is how many times, during that "extended period of time", somebody in the neighbourhood heard something and decided it was none of their business. Domestic violence in Macedonia rarely begins with an arrest - that is the end of the story, not the beginning.