A safe house for male sur­vivors of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and their chil­dren was com­plet­ed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) and hand­ed over to the Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Min­istry in 2020, but was nev­er oc­cu­pied by this group of peo­ple as in­tend­ed.

The build­ing was in­stead loaned to an­oth­er group of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian, Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy re­vealed that the safe house (SH1) had been tem­porar­i­ly on loan to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty (CA).

She said, “The orig­i­nal in­ten­tion was to tem­porar­i­ly op­er­a­tionalise this fa­cil­i­ty for male sur­vivors of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and their chil­dren un­til the com­ple­tion and han­dover of SH2. Due to an ur­gent is­sue that de­vel­oped with the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the SH1 fa­cil­i­ty was tem­porar­i­ly hand­ed over to that or­gan­i­sa­tion for use by an­oth­er crit­i­cal tar­get group.”

Un­able to say ex­act­ly when SH1 would be op­er­a­tionalised for male vic­tims of do­mes­tic abuse, Web­ster-Roy as­sured the start-up date for re­fur­bish­ment works was ear­ly in the new fis­cal year.

She added, “Ap­proval was re­cent­ly ob­tained for the rel­e­vant staff to en­able the fa­cil­i­ty to com­mence the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices once the in­fra­struc­tur­al works have been com­plet­ed.”

Al­though there are sev­er­al halfway homes and shel­ters for fe­male vic­tims of abuse, there are no such fa­cil­i­ties avail­able at this time for male vic­tims of abuse in T&T.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the re­luc­tance of many men to re­port abuse as they feel em­bar­rassed and fear not be­ing be­lieved, SFATT pres­i­dent Rhon­dall Fee­les called for the cre­ation of safe sanc­tu­ar­ies for male vic­tims.

Sad­dened over the lack of as­sis­tance for bat­tered men, Fee­les ex­plained much more is need­ed than just a room for them to sleep at night.

Heart­ened by the news that the Min­istry of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs was mov­ing to es­tab­lish shel­ters for men, Fee­les said ef­forts must be made to en­sure it is wel­com­ing and at­trac­tive.

He be­lieves a holis­tic ap­proach is need­ed to help them get back to a point where they can func­tion in so­ci­ety. Fee­les said it needs to go be­yond just of­fer­ing them a bed for the night.

“It can­not be op­er­at­ed as a ho­tel. In some in­stances when there is im­me­di­ate dan­ger or some­body has been put out of their cur­rent res­i­dence and evict­ed I can un­der­stand that, but it must be­come big­ger than that.”

Fa­cil­i­ties must be holis­tic and heal­ing

Fee­les is en­vi­sion­ing cen­tres con­tain­ing of­fices op­er­at­ed by non-gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies with sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, coun­selling, men­tal health pro­grammes, and safe spaces where fam­i­lies can in­ter­act.

He said, “The men who come to these places should not be com­ing out worse than when they went in.

“Peo­ple must be will­ing to go. It mustn’t have a taboo about it. The build­ing it­self must not look like vic­tims are head­ing to a psych ward, it must be invit­ing.”

Com­ment­ing on the stig­ma and shame that pre­vent bat­tered men from shar­ing their sto­ries with each oth­er, he said “That in it­self is a big prob­lem, as they keep it in­side and at the end of it all, they just ex­plode.”

In the case of Mr Mo­hammed (See sto­ry be­low) and oth­ers like him, Fee­les said when frus­tra­tion is mixed with in­tox­i­ca­tion, it could cre­ate a bad sit­u­a­tion “be­cause he is go­ing back home in the same space, drunk or high and any­thing could hap­pen when he goes back in there.”

He added, “Af­ter com­ing from the sta­tion where his mind al­ready tells him that there is no jus­tice for you in the law, so you have to take jus­tice in your own hands and you could say you don’t care about any­thing and you ready to go…this is how things hap­pen.”

Re­fer­ring to some of the mur­der/sui­cides that had oc­curred since the year be­gan, Fee­les said it on­ly takes one sec­ond for things to change.

Op­ti­mistic that a safe sanc­tu­ary mod­el as sug­gest­ed above could al­so be made avail­able for fe­male vic­tims of abuse, Fee­les said the phys­i­cal con­di­tion at some of the ex­ist­ing shel­ters is one of the rea­sons why some vic­tims refuse to leave their homes now.

In­di­cat­ing the SFATT stands ready to work with the State to cre­ate safe, invit­ing and restora­tive spaces for bat­tered men, he added, “When peo­ple go to these places, they must come out feel­ing sanc­ti­fied and even bet­ter to go back out in­to so­ci­ety.”

Abuse against men high­ly preva­lent, but un­der-re­port­ed

Claim­ing abuse against men in T&T was high­ly preva­lent, but ob­vi­ous­ly un­der-re­port­ed, Fee­les said the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence leg­is­la­tion was very broad and went be­yond just be­ing bat­tered phys­i­cal­ly, as it ex­tend­ed to in­clude emo­tion­al vi­o­lence as well.

“Some peo­ple just want to leave where they are phys­i­cal­ly be­cause they don’t have peace…some­body in the house keeps threat­en­ing them. Your wife could threat­en to do you cer­tain things or you are fi­nan­cial­ly abused as she is earn­ing more than you, that hap­pens a lot,” Fee­les dis­closed.

“Many men are em­bar­rassed be­cause in this new, mod­ern world many men’s wives earn more than them and they have to stay qui­et.”

Aware of in­stances where some of these women are bring­ing oth­er men in­to the mat­ri­mo­ni­al home and the hus­bands were un­able to say any­thing, Fee­les said, “This is the re­al­i­ty of it as she is in con­trol. Peo­ple think it is about gen­der but it is about a pow­er dy­nam­ic. Who­ev­er is more pow­er­ful in whichev­er way and they don’t know how to con­trol that pow­er, they can be­come abu­sive with that pow­er.

Male do­mes­tic abuse vic­tims still re­luc­tant to make re­ports

Laughed at scorn­ful­ly by fe­male of­fi­cers of the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion as he at­tempt­ed to file a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­port against his fe­male com­pan­ion on May 29, a vic­tim said he was turned away and end­ed up try­ing to drown his sor­rows in a bar.

Un­know­ing to him, the stranger at the bar that Mr Mo­hammed chose to open up to was Mar­lon An­der­son an ad­vo­cate for vic­tims of abuse, who was able to suc­cess­ful­ly redi­rect him to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU), where he was ad­vised to go to the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion in­stead to make the re­port.

The un­usu­al but time­ly oc­cur­rence may have saved Mo­hammed from hurt­ing his part­ner, him­self or oth­ers.

Mo­hammed, who said he was a vic­tim of phys­i­cal and ver­bal abuse, shared his frus­tra­tion in a video post­ed to so­cial me­dia.

While abuse of men hap­pens far more of­ten than one might ex­pect, here in T&T, it re­mains heav­i­ly un­der-re­port­ed as it is still viewed as a taboo sub­ject that brings ridicule and shame to the vic­tim. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od March 2020 to March 2022, a to­tal of 1,333 re­ports of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence came from men.

Mo­hammed spoke of the dis­re­spect he was sub­ject­ed to as he re­lat­ed the sit­u­a­tion to two fe­male of­fi­cers and a male of­fi­cer at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion who lat­er re­port­ed­ly told him, “’You is a mad man.’”

Walk­ing out of the sta­tion de­mor­alised and de­feat­ed, he said, “I had to leave the sta­tion un­com­fort­able in my mind, vex. I look­ing to dam­age, I look­ing to kill some­body.”

Mo­hammed ques­tioned, “Who we go­ing to turn to as men in this kind of life?”

Re­veal­ing he was even­tu­al­ly sat­is­fied af­ter speak­ing with WPC Burgess of the GB­VU at the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion, he added, “As guys out here who have a lot of is­sues. I had nowhere to turn to and Mr An­der­son bring me back.”

With nowhere else to go right now, Mo­hammed has no choice but to re­main in the same house where he said he is be­ing abused.

Days af­ter Mo­hammed’s dilem­ma was high­light­ed on so­cial me­dia, a sec­ond video post­ed to so­cial me­dia showed the poor con­duct of se­nior and ju­nior of­fi­cers at the Va­len­cia Po­lice Sta­tion en­gaged in shout­ing/cussing out each oth­er in the pres­ence of a male vic­tim of do­mes­tic abuse wait­ing to make an of­fi­cial com­plaint.

As the fe­male of­fi­cer in­ter­fac­ing with the bleed­ing and shirt­less vic­tim in­di­cat­ed her in­ten­tion to write the re­port in the sta­tion di­ary de­spite the or­der by her se­nior male coun­ter­part to make him wait, an­oth­er male of­fi­cer could be heard telling the vic­tim, “Right through, you go take beat up from your gyul so? Alyuh ain’t fed up get licks? Last time I talk to that man, I tell the man…broth­er, get out.”

Nurs­ing a wound to the head, the vic­tim was heard re­spond­ing in the back­ground, “Yeah of­fi­cer, I get­ting out.” The of­fi­cer re­tort­ed, “Watch where you is now. Is vagi­na you like so? To get your head buss up so?”

The video which is just over sev­en min­utes long cap­tured the taunt­ing and abu­sive na­ture of the se­nior male of­fi­cer.

An­der­son, an out­reach of­fi­cer at the Sin­gle Fa­thers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SFATT), lament­ed the ridicule of­ten met­ed out to men in these types of sit­u­a­tions that make them re­luc­tant to make re­ports.

“A lot of men go to the sta­tions to make re­ports of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is­sues and are of­ten ei­ther laughed at or turned away not be­ing able to lodge their com­plaints.”

Call­ing on the po­lice to be more un­der­stand­ing when men come for­ward with such com­plaints, both An­der­son and Mo­hammed urged the po­lice “to be a lit­tle more sen­si­tive in deal­ing with these is­sues.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the first in­ci­dent, se­nior of­fi­cials with­in the TTPS said there was no of­fi­cial re­port to act on, but added that greater fo­cus is be­ing placed on train­ing of­fi­cers on how to deal with the pub­lic.