RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Last year, over 500 sur­vivors sought as­sis­tance for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, yet many more re­main un­aware they’re vic­tims, as they have not re­port­ed their sit­u­a­tions says Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh, gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Coali­tion of Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence. 

She made this dis­clo­sure at Sorop­ti­mist In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ange Cafe’s Sorori Tea Af­ter­noon for Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Aware­ness held at Mas­ka Com­pound in La Ro­main over the week­end.

Mowlah-Baksh said the CADV and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions have start­ed 16 days of ac­tivism geared at build­ing aware­ness about gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“We pro­tect sur­vivors and pro­vide help for per­pe­tra­tors,” she said.

In ad­dress­ing pre­ven­tion, Mowlah-Baksh not­ed CADV’s ef­forts in train­ing var­i­ous pro­fes­sion­als—nurs­es, po­lice, ju­di­cia­ry, first re­spon­ders, civ­il so­ci­ety of­fi­cers, guid­ance of­fi­cers, and em­ploy­ees—to ad­dress do­mes­tic vi­o­lence with­out pass­ing judg­ment. 

De­spite their work, she stressed that more ef­forts were need­ed.

“As you know one in every three women in this coun­try re­port­ed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence. Last year we pro­vid­ed sup­port to over 500 women. Yet One in every three do not dis­close be­ing abused,” Mowlah-Baksh said.

Aside from pro­vid­ing psy­cho-so­cial ser­vices, Mowlah-Baksh men­tioned CADV’s in­volve­ment in pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion, cit­ing their piv­otal role in in­tro­duc­ing sig­nif­i­cant leg­is­la­tion like the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act of 1999 and its 2020 amend­ment, the Sex Of­fend­ers Reg­istry, and their on­go­ing ef­forts to­wards the Sex­u­al Ha­rass­ment Bill.

Mean­while, the head of the Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit of the TTPS Claire Guy-Al­leyne em­pha­sised the preva­lence of silent suf­fer­ing, stress­ing the need for spaces where vic­tims feel com­fort­able seek­ing help with­out judg­ment. 

“We are all agents of change and we all want ze­ro re­ports of gen­der-based child abuse and sex­u­al as­saults. We have to cre­ate spaces where per­sons who are suf­fer­ing would want to come for­ward and seek help,” she said.

Guy-Al­leyne said many vic­tims refuse to give state­ments when they re­alise the po­lice are in­volved be­cause they do not want their loved ones to end up in prison. She high­light­ed the im­por­tance of in­volv­ing men in con­ver­sa­tions and en­sur­ing per­pe­tra­tors re­ceive as­sis­tance.

“We must have men in con­ver­sa­tion, we can­not just bash them. Some­times, men are the per­pe­tra­tors yes but there are men suf­fer­ing from do­mes­tic vi­o­lence as well,” she said.

And the Di­rec­tor of the Halfway House Veron­i­ca Lan­dreth-Smith said vi­o­lence against women is a shame­ful stain on the world and a na­tion­al cri­sis. 

She said the Halfway House is a shel­ter for vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. “The shel­ter was opened in 1986 and has ac­com­mo­dat­ed more than 3,000 women and chil­dren since then,” she re­vealed.

Apart from pro­vid­ing food, shel­ter and cloth­ing, Lan­dreth-Smith said they al­so pro­vide le­gal help. 

“We have chal­lenges in that a lot of them come ex­pect­ing that we will get them an HDC house or apart­ment. We take let­ters on their be­half and get them food cards, it was eas­i­er to get a food card ear­li­er but dif­fi­cult now,” she added.

De­spite dif­fi­cul­ties in ob­tain­ing aid like food cards, she said the shel­ter con­tin­ues its vi­tal sup­port for vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.