Petra Wünschová

Petra Wünschová died on 28 September 2026 at the age of 52 after a serious illness, according to Seznam Zprávy. Centrum Locika announced her death overnight into Tuesday 29 September 2026 on its social channels, and people close to her also shared the news via her personal profile. The organisation said she had helped Czech society speak openly about violence against children and ensure that those who lived with it could receive timely specialist help. It pledged to continue the work she had started so that every child might have a childhood without violence. The precise place of death was not detailed in the first wave of reputable reports.

Petra Wünschová was born in 1974 in what is now the Czech Republic. Public profiles describe her as a psychotherapist and art therapist who specialised in work with children. From the early 2000s she completed specialised training focused on child victims of crime and on trauma, and she later took part in foreign study visits and conferences on the same themes. Detailed accounts of her childhood, schooling and family of origin were not the focus of the obituaries published after her death.

From about 2001 Wünschová worked with children whose lives had been shaped by domestic violence, beginning in a confidential shelter for survivors and continuing in outpatient therapy. In 2015 she founded Centrum Locika in Prague as the first specialised Czech centre for children affected by violence in the family. Under her direction Locika combined direct help (counselling, therapy, crisis intervention and legal advocacy) with prevention and training for police, child-protection workers, teachers and judges. The centre also developed the first Czech Children's Advocacy Centre, accompanying child victims through criminal proceedings so that poorly handled interviews would not deepen their trauma. By the time of her death Locika had helped more than 4,600 children directly.

Beyond casework she campaigned for systemic change. She was a long-standing member of the Czech Government Committee for the Prevention of Domestic and Sexual Violence and of the Government Committee on the Rights of the Child. After years of advocacy, an amendment to the Civil Code that explicitly rejects corporal punishment and degrading treatment of children in upbringing took effect on 1 January 2026. She lectured widely, appeared on Czech Television, Czech Radio and other outlets, spoke at TEDx, and in 2025 co-authored Laskavé rodičovství (Kind Parenting), a book on raising children with clear boundaries and without punishments.

Wünschová's public life was closely tied to Prague and to Locika. She described herself as continually searching for better ways of therapeutic work with children and as ready to meet political, social and media challenges that came with that mission. Obituaries and organisational tributes focused on her professional courage and persistence rather than on private family detail. Her colleagues asked the public to remember her family and closest circle after the announcement of her death.

Wünschová's legacy rests in Locika's continuing service, in the Children's Advocacy Centre model she helped establish, and in the 2026 legal clarification that corporal punishment and degrading treatment have no place in Czech upbringing. Colleagues remembered her for giving children a voice and for persuading adults that change was possible. Psychiatrist Peter Pöthe said he knew of no one who had done more for endangered and traumatised children in the Czech Republic, and perhaps across the European Union. Locika said her work remained in thousands of children's stories, in the people she inspired, and in the reforms she helped secure.