“Be­cause of love, I killed her...If I didn't love her, I don't think I would feel so much pain…It's like she took an ar­row and stabbed me in the heart.”—A mur­der­er

(Quote tak­en from the book In the Name of Love: Ro­man­tic Ide­ol­o­gy and its vic­tims, writ­ten by Prof Aaron Ben-Ze'ev and Ruhama Goussin­sky)

The chop­ping death of 29-year-old Neisha Cyleane Sankar on Sep­tem­ber 2 served as a painful re­minder to women across T&T that the DV/IPV (do­mes­tic vi­o­lence or in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence) de­mon was far from dead. Killed by her hus­band Har­richar­ran Ram­sun­dar, who sub­se­quent­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide, it was said Sankar met her death af­ter Ram­sun­dar found out that she want­ed to leave the re­la­tion­ship.

Just one week af­ter, on Sep­tem­ber 11, 20-year-old Trinida­di­an, Kiara Al­lyene, liv­ing in Flori­da, was al­leged­ly mur­dered by her boyfriend and fa­ther of their one-year-old daugh­ter.

T&T is not the on­ly is­land suf­fer­ing from this dis­ease as on Sep­tem­ber 8, 2019, the boyfriend of for­mer Miss An­guil­la queen Taitu Good­win al­leged­ly stabbed her to death be­fore bury­ing her in a shal­low grave on an An­guil­lan Beach. She was the daugh­ter of for­mer An­tiguan am­bas­sador Bruce Good­win.

But these sto­ry­lines are all too fa­mil­iar as over the years and on sev­er­al in­stances, women were mur­dered af­ter they an­nounced want­i­ng to leave their re­la­tion­ship. (See side­bar)

In 2018, sta­tis­tics from the TTPS's Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) in­di­cat­ed that an av­er­age of 25 women was mur­dered every year in DV/IPV cas­es.

It said From Jan­u­ary 2018 to No­vem­ber 2018, 22 DV/IPV re­lat­ed mur­ders were record­ed. While in 2017, at year's end, there was a to­tal of 52 mur­ders of women with 43 be­ing DV/IP re­lat­ed killings.

In 2017, at year's end, there was a to­tal of 52 mur­ders of women with 43 be­ing DV/IP re­lat­ed killings, mak­ing it 21 few­er killings for 2018. The to­tal fig­ure for Jan­u­ary 2019 to the present has not yet been re­leased. And the UN has re­port­ed, 38 per cent of women mur­dered were at the hands of an in­ti­mate part­ner.

But what is the rea­son­ing be­hind the ac­tion of such per­pe­tra­tors? Why does the home be­come a dan­ger­ous place for a woman and by ex­ten­sion her chil­dren, once she de­cides to leave the home?

'Li­cence to kill'

Psy­chi­a­trists Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh be­lieves this stems from a pa­tri­ar­chal so­cial sys­tem that gives men the im­pres­sion they have the right to pos­sess and dis­pose of women as prop­er­ty. “It is per­pe­trat­ed by frus­trat­ed men who have giv­en them­selves a li­cence to kill,” Deyals­ingh said.

He said women of­ten stay in such re­la­tion­ships at times un­til it's too late be­cause psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly they can­not walk away.

“It's as if psy­cho­log­i­cal chains bind them to the abuser. They can't leave even if they know they should.”

He ex­plained that a man's act of vi­o­lence tends to cre­ate a con­text of fear, pow­er and con­trol, ul­ti­mate­ly con­di­tion­ing the mind of his vic­tim, thus achiev­ing com­plete pow­er.

“Women may be mo­ti­vat­ed by what they deem as love, and blame them­selves for get­ting him an­gry and think­ing it is a one-off en­counter, and will­ing to for­give. But in the well-known cy­cle of vi­o­lence, there is a pat­tern—the beg­ging phase where he says he can't live with­out the per­son and swears to change. The hon­ey­moon phase then comes where he treats you nice and then the buildup phase, which then es­ca­lates, back to the vi­o­lence phase.”

Deyals­ingh ad­vised that the first act of vi­o­lence should be im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed as once it isn't, the abuser be­lieves he al­ready has con­trol.

Deyals­ingh al­so shared the view that women should be al­lowed to leave abu­sive re­la­tion­ships in peace.

Sev­er­al rea­sons lie be­neath

Psy­chol­o­gist Michele Carter said there were sev­er­al rea­sons be­hind a man en­gag­ing in that thought process. These in­clude the fear of los­ing con­trol and pow­er, fear of be­ing alone, the fear of shame and ex­po­sure that peo­ple may find out he was abus­ing his part­ner and sim­ply the lev­el of ag­gres­sion that he has el­e­vat­ed to.

“We need to un­der­stand that he may have been ex­posed to a life in his de­vel­op­ment where a man beats a woman in­to sub­mis­sion be­cause, again, he has to have that con­trol,” Carter said.

Carter said the man might al­so be suf­fer­ing from some sort of men­tal dis­or­der. And there are sev­er­al types of men­tal dis­or­ders where the per­son would dis­play symp­toms of vi­o­lence. She not­ed that, un­for­tu­nate­ly, peo­ple were not seek­ing prop­er med­ical care and in­ter­ven­tion to di­ag­nose ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

“I am not say­ing this is an ex­cuse for him to en­gage in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, but it might ex­plain why he en­gages in such a lev­el of vi­o­lence and why his mind­set is the way it is.”

Carter said it was im­per­a­tive one be­comes cog­nisant of all the fac­tors that con­tribute to the mind of the per­pe­tra­tor, where his thought process­es were be­ing in­flu­enced in such a way that he be­lieves that the on­ly way he can re­lease his wife or girl­friend is by killing her and he es­ca­lates to this point of vi­o­lence. The per­pe­tra­tor may al­so turn on them­selves as they feel a sense of hope­less­ness be­cause the re­la­tion­ship has come to an end.

“We need to know what is hap­pen­ing with our men as they de­vel­op. And I am speak­ing here about young boys from the mo­ment they be­gin to grow and de­vel­op. We need to help them un­der­stand they are to re­spect, love and care for women. We al­so have to teach them how to let go of in­di­vid­u­als, and that peo­ple are not things or pos­ses­sions,” Carter said.

She said care must al­so be tak­en to un­der­stand what they are ex­posed to in their young years, like vi­o­lence in the home, vi­o­lence against women con­veyed through mu­sic and oth­er forms of dig­i­tal me­dia, as all these things can in­flu­ence the mind­set of the man.

Women fac­ing a se­ries of hur­dles

Vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence face a se­ries of hur­dles, which con­verge to se­vere­ly im­pede their abil­i­ty to ex­it tox­ic and vi­o­lent re­la­tion­ships. And these hur­dles range from harm­ful so­cio-cul­tur­al norms, leg­is­la­tion deficits, fail­ure to im­ple­ment leg­is­la­tion, in­con­sis­tent and ap­pro­pri­ate po­lice re­spons­es, in­ef­fi­cient jus­tices sys­tem, in­ad­e­quate so­cial ser­vices and a fail­ure to de­vel­op ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ty re­spons­es, ac­cord­ing to Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence's (CADV) gen­er­al man­ag­er, Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh.

She said the acts of nor­mal­is­ing vi­o­lence and vic­tim sham­ing and blam­ing places an in­de­fen­si­ble bur­den of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on vic­tims whilst the per­pe­tra­tors are not held to ac­count for their ac­tions.

“The State is sad­dled with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­tect­ing all of its cit­i­zens. This re­spon­si­bil­i­ty makes it com­pul­so­ry for the nec­es­sary pro­vi­sions with­in the na­tion­al bud­get to ad­dress the prob­lem of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence giv­en the as­tound­ing fig­ures, which end in trag­ic cir­cum­stances. Fig­ures which re­main con­sis­tent an­nu­al­ly and which are er­ro­neous­ly de­scribed as crimes of pas­sion,” Mowlah-Baksh said.

She made 10 rec­om­men­da­tions:

1. There has to be pro­vi­sions made for and widen the scope of sub­ven­tions to NGOs that pro­vide di­rect and

in­di­rect sup­port to vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors es­pe­cial­ly shel­ters.

2. Make al­lo­ca­tions to pro­grammes that were halt­ed such as the rein­tro­duc­tion of the court-man­dat­ed

bat­ter­er in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme.

3. Re-in­tro­duc­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice.

4. Ex­pand and pro­vide ad­di­tion­al re­sources to the Vic­tims and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit.

5. Make al­lo­ca­tions for equip­ping po­lice sta­tions with spe­cialised spaces to deal with vic­tims.

6. Make pro­vi­sions for the in­tro­duc­tion of fam­i­ly vi­o­lence ed­u­ca­tion and gen­der in­to the cur­ricu­lum as ear­ly

as child­hood ed­u­ca­tion.

7. Do what is nec­es­sary fi­nan­cial­ly to sort out the jus­tice sys­tem.

8. En­sure that the po­lice are al­ways equipped with the nec­es­sary tools to re­spond to cas­es of do­mes­tic

vi­o­lence. Many times there are no ve­hi­cles to take vic­tims to safe hous­es.

9. In­tro­duce a pro­gramme spe­cif­ic to vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence where they can ac­cess emer­gency

funds to ex­it vi­o­lent and life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions. This can be man­aged by an NGO.

10. Pro­vide fund­ing for the es­tab­lish­ment of a spe­cialised unit with­in the po­lice ser­vice on gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

Some women killed in 2018

Some of the women killed by their part­ners (2018)

1) Dru­patee Sankar (Hands sev­ered; Alive but crit­i­cal; 2018, Jan 1)

2) Arisa Vana David (Stran­gled; 2018, Jan 2)

3) Vanes­sa Ali aka In­ga Scheult (Shot; 2018, Jan 4)

4)*Uniden­ti­fied* (Mu­ti­lat­ed and burnt; 2018, Jan 6)

5) Sarah Joseph (Miss­ing, Jan. 20; Shot, body wrapped in a sheet, dumped; 2018, Jan 23)

6) Kay­la Marie Solomon-Caine, 24 (Blud­geoned to death, Feb 02, 2018, Lam­beau, To­ba­go)

Fact File

* 1 in 3 women and girls ex­pe­ri­ence phys­i­cal or sex­u­al vi­o­lence in their life­time, most fre­quent­ly by an in­ti­mate part­ner.

* On­ly 52 per cent of women mar­ried or in a union freely make their de­ci­sions about sex­u­al re­la­tions, con­tra­cep­tive use and health care.

* World­wide, al­most 750 mil­li­on women and girls alive to­day were mar­ried be­fore their 18th birth­day; while 200 mil­li­on women and girls have un­der­gone fe­male gen­i­tal mu­ti­la­tion (FGM).

* 1 in 2 women killed world­wide were killed by their part­ners or fam­i­ly in 2012; while on­ly 1 out of 20 men were killed un­der sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.

* 71 per cent of all hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims world­wide are women and girls, and 3 out of 4 of these women and girls are sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ed.