An­na-Lisa Paul

Sev­en bat­tered women have sought the as­sis­tance of a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion with­in the past two weeks af­ter walk­ing away from abu­sive sit­u­a­tions.

Re­veal­ing they had been ap­proached by vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and oth­er forms of abuse, to pro­vide tem­po­rary shel­ter, pres­i­dent of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als (OABI), Sh­er­na Alexan­der-Ben­jamin, called for greater pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ship to as­sist such vic­tims.

Dis­clos­ing the in­for­ma­tion dur­ing a cheque hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny at One Wood­brook Place, St James, yes­ter­day, Alexan­der-Ben­jamin ex­plained that while they had been able to pro­vide shel­ters for all of them, they were chal­lenged to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tions for their chil­dren as many of those places were on­ly set up to cater for the adult vic­tim.

She said that was one area in which they were seek­ing ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance in the form of apart­ments or hous­ing which could fa­cil­i­tate a vic­tim and her chil­dren.

De­clar­ing that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence was not a new sit­u­a­tion but one which had be­come pop­u­larised due to the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, she said the OABI was found­ed in 2008 and launched in 2011 to help peo­ple like her­self, as she bold­ly an­nounced that she had been a child­hood vic­tim of sex­u­al, emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse.

As a re­sult of her work in that area, she said se­ri­ous gaps had been iden­ti­fied in the heal­ing process as there was a se­ri­ous lack of "safe spaces" for vic­tims and there was the is­sue of "re­vic­tim­i­sa­tion" as the af­fect­ed per­son was made to re­count their tale of abuse con­tin­u­al­ly to var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties.

She said while the US and Eu­rope could quan­ti­fy the amount of mon­ey spent to as­sist vic­tims of abuse, which was es­ti­mat­ed to be around $800 bil­lion, there was no such sys­tem in place in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, one in every three women will ex­pe­ri­ence some form of abuse dur­ing their life­time.

Alexan­der-Ben­jamin said the OABI had launched its Ze­ro in Three project to re­duce this num­ber to ze­ro as they get set to roll out a se­ries of events over the com­ing weeks as the world cel­e­brates the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Vi­o­lence Against Women on No­vem­ber 25.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Fortress Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd, Car­los Nep­tune, said the ten-year-old com­pa­ny had cho­sen to part­ner with the OABI and the Women's Mis­sion­ary So­ci­ety of the African Methodist Epis­co­pal Church as "it was an is­sue close to our hearts."

Claim­ing that 55 per cent of its staff are women, Nep­tune said their com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions had re­sult­ed in hun­dreds of women seek­ing es­cape from abu­sive sit­u­a­tions.

He said alarm­ing sta­tis­tics re­vealed that dur­ing the pe­ri­od Au­gust 2015 to Ju­ly 2016, over 56,000 mat­ters of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence had been brought be­fore the courts.

Reaf­firm­ing his com­pa­ny's com­mit­ment to elim­i­nat­ing vi­o­lence against women and chil­dren, Nep­tune said the com­pa­ny host­ed its first run/walk on Au­gust 6 at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, fol­low­ing which the pro­ceeds, amount­ing to $10,287, were do­nat­ed to the OABI to help as­sist vic­tims of abuse.