“If the num­bers we see in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence were ap­plied to ter­ror­ism or gang vi­o­lence, the en­tire coun­try would be up in arms, and it would be the lead sto­ry on the news every night,” Mark Green, Amer­i­can physi­cian and politi­cian.

Suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ing, rem­e­dy­ing, and re­spond­ing to vi­o­lence against women would con­tin­ue to be a chal­lenge if three things are not em­ployed—a com­mu­ni­ty ap­proach, a shift in mind­set to how vi­o­lence against women is per­ceived and ad­e­quate sup­port ser­vices.

This is the mes­sage be­ing sent by Women’s groups and ac­tivists fight­ing for the rid­dance of vi­o­lence against women in T&T, as In­ter­na­tion­al Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Vi­o­lence Against Women is com­mem­o­rat­ed glob­al­ly to­day, with the theme: Or­ange the World: #HearMe­Too.

“With gen­der-based vi­o­lence, there are so many ex­pla­na­tions at­trib­ut­able to the con­tin­u­a­tion and per­pet­u­a­tion of vi­o­lence against women. And it’s deeply root­ed in all kinds of no­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with how pa­tri­archy con­tin­ues to play it­self out in all our in­sti­tu­tions,” says Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh.

She ex­plains much of the de­lay in the re­duc­tion of vi­o­lence against women, had to do with how it is per­ceived and the pop­u­la­tion’s at­ti­tude to­wards it.

De­scrib­ing it as a “cri­sis,” the num­ber of women killed in the coun­try an­nu­al­ly, Mowlah-Baksh re­ferred to cur­rent sta­tis­tics from the TTPS’s Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA), say­ing for the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 2017 to No­vem­ber 2018, 25 women were mur­dered due to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence or in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence (DV/IPV), and an av­er­age of 25 women are mur­dered every year.

From Jan­u­ary 2018 to present (No­vem­ber), there has been a record­ed 22 DV/IPV, re­lat­ed mur­ders.

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.

Asked if she felt the re­duced fig­ure sig­nalled a step in the right di­rec­tion to a re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crimes against women, Mowlah Baksh em­pha­sised they do not. She says it might be that no one ex­am­ined why the fig­ures were so high last year, there­fore she would not make a nu­mer­a­tive pro­nounce­ment on it.

Abigail Jones-Chapman

She did ex­press, how­ev­er, that from all an­gles, there has been no rea­son to cel­e­brate and re­ferred to the March 2018, La Brea killings of Abi­gail-Jones Chap­man, 42, her daugh­ter, Olivia Chap­man, a friend of the daugh­ter, Micheala Ma­son, and their land­lord, Michael Scott.

“The mere fact that 25 women con­tin­ue to be mur­dered every year, I think that’s a cri­sis. Be­cause the vi­o­lence is “nor­malised,” many peo­ple are of the im­pres­sion, a woman re­ceiv­ing a ‘lit­tle slap here and there’ is noth­ing much to talk about, and it’s all just part of the course,” ar­gues Mowlah-Baksh.

She con­tin­ues, “How we per­ceive things, that’s how it forms out in the me­dia. And if we see it as some­thing “nor­mal”, then we see ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong with it nor the ur­gent need to put the nec­es­sary sys­tems in place to deal with it.”

She dis­clos­es qual­i­ta­tive re­search done in 2017 by In­sti­tute of Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies (IGDS), UWI St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, re­vealed the ma­jor­i­ty of pro­grammes in place, which come from gov­ern­men­tal so­cial ser­vices, were woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate.

Ac­cord­ing to her, there are not enough pro­vi­sions in place to ad­e­quate­ly cater to the needs of vic­tims.

“Shame is a big part of the abuse. And when vic­tims have to go to pub­lic hos­pi­tals and talk about be­ing vi­o­lent­ly raped or beat­en in front of every­body, they would avoid go­ing. This a very del­i­cate is­sue, and you want to pro­tect that vic­tim from feel­ing fur­ther abused or fur­ther vi­o­lat­ed,” Mowlah-Baksh laments.

She notes, the same goes for the po­lice who is sup­posed to be a first re­spon­der, but sore­ly lacks train­ing in deal­ing with vic­tims.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there isn’t any sys­tem at the pub­lic hos­pi­tals to doc­u­ment DP/IVP vic­tims when they come in, Mowlah-Baksh re­lays. She says this re­sults in un­der-re­port­ing; there­fore ex­ist­ing sta­tis­tics may not ac­cu­rate­ly rep­re­sent the big­ger pic­ture.

More State In­ter­ven­tion

At best, Mowlah-Baksh says CADV has been try­ing to make in­roads to im­prove sup­port ser­vices at some hos­pi­tals via its train­ing ex­er­cis­es. So far she com­mu­ni­cates, they have en­gaged in train­ing ses­sions of over 60 staff, in­clud­ing nurs­es, de­part­ment heads and trainees, at the San­gre Grande Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal.

On De­cem­ber 10, 2018, CADV in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion (EOC), would al­so be host­ing a ses­sion with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, aimed at strength­en­ing the le­gal re­sponse to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

But even though CADV takes plea­sure in these coach­ing drills Mowlah-Baksh stress­es, they are faced with many chal­lenges as a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion with lim­it­ed re­sources.

“This is­sue needs more State in­ter­ven­tion, State re­sources and State re­spons­es. It needs more pri­ori­tis­ing by the state of its sup­port ser­vices. There is al­so the need for a more co­or­di­nat­ed and har­monised ap­proach by all stake­hold­ers push­ing for the re­duc­tion of vi­o­lence against women,” she ad­mon­ish­es.

CADV be­gins its 16 days of ac­tiv­i­ties to­day with a tea host­ed by the Pe­tro­le­um Women’s Club and would end on De­cem­ber 10, with its meet­ing with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.

Women’s groups speak out

Founder of Rise: Woman Re­dis­cov­er Your Strength (WRYS), Cami­ka Mc Letchie, says she be­lieves the “go-slow,” in achiev­ing a re­duc­tion in vi­o­lence against women in T&T was as a re­sult of lack of ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness.

“I think as a na­tion there is the need for a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort in rais­ing aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion, not just among vic­tims but al­so among cit­i­zens and first re­spon­ders.”

She be­lieves a lot more “teach­ing tools” are para­mount in the fight to stop vi­o­lence against women. Em­pha­sis­ing fur­ther on first re­spon­ders, she notes, doc­tors, nurs­es, po­lice of­fi­cers and even teach­ers, need to be trained to iden­ti­fy vic­tims, be it a child or adult, and to know right away the course of ac­tion to take.

“For in­stance, if a woman goes to the hos­pi­tal and she is in­jured, and she lies about how she ob­tained her in­juries, the med­ical staff should be trained to de­tect if that per­son is a vic­tim or not.

The 43-year-old do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor who re­cent­ly re­turned from Croa­t­ia where the doc­u­men­tary ti­tled Break­ing The Cy­cle—a riv­et­ing ‘tell-all’ about her life as a vic­tim and sur­vivor, was screened and won the Ju­ry Spe­cial Men­tion.

The award, adds there should be new leg­is­la­tion to make it manda­to­ry that im­me­di­ate re­ports are made if DV/IPV is de­tect­ed, as is the case with chil­dren.

Let Women Live, a lo­cal so­cial me­dia sup­port group for vic­tims and sur­vivors en­dorsed the sen­ti­ments of CADV and WRYS but un­der­scored there was al­so need for a “com­mu­ni­ty of sup­port,” be­gin­ning with the fam­i­ly. Ad­min­is­tra­tive di­rec­tor of the group Melanie Lee, says most times women stay in abu­sive re­la­tion­ships be­cause they have no oth­er form of sup­port.

“They may have chil­dren. They may not have an al­ter­na­tive place to go, and their fi­nances might be very lim­it­ed. These are re­al chal­lenges that vic­tims face al the time. This can make a vic­tim feel trapped, and though they want to get out, they make up their mind to stay, es­pe­cial­ly if it means keep­ing a roof over their chil­dren’s heads,” Lee ex­plains.

“We can­not just con­tin­ue to tell women “just leave the re­la­tion­ship.” The sup­port ser­vices must be com­pe­tent­ly ready to give these women a new start. Abuse isn’t just phys­i­cal. Per­pe­tra­tors have mas­tered the art of con­trol, and they do this by break­ing com­plete­ly, the self-es­teem and self –worth of their vic­tims,” she adds.

Lee, al­so a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor, called on the au­thor­i­ties to stop play­ing games with the lives of women in T&T and get it right.

“We need to be­come more proac­tive about this. From the lev­el of leg­is­la­tion to the lev­el of the com­mu­ni­ty, we all just need to be­come more proac­tive about this,’ Lee con­clud­ed.

FACT FILE:

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

* On­ly 52% of women mar­ried or in a union freely make their own 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% of all hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims world­wide are women and girls, and 3 out of 4 of these women and girls are sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit­ed.

* Vi­o­lence against women is as se­ri­ous a cause of death and in­ca­pac­i­ty among women of re­pro­duc­tive age as can­cer, and a greater cause of ill health than traf­fic ac­ci­dents and malar­ia com­bined.