In June 2014, Or­pha Prescil­la Hack­ett, 24, of Union Vil­lage, Rio Claro, died af­ter be­ing chopped about the body by a man whom she had tak­en out a re­strain­ing or­der against.

The moth­er of two—a four-year-old girl and a two year-old boy—had re­ceived a three-year pro­tec­tion/re­strain­ing or­der against the man in the court ear­li­er in the day af­ter end­ing an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship with him.

Hack­ett was at­tacked while vis­it­ing her sis­ter.

The sus­pect was de­tained by peo­ple who wit­nessed the hor­rif­ic in­ci­dent and called the po­lice who were able to re­trieve the weapons used in the mur­der. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the man had been seen buy­ing two knives and a cut­lass be­fore the at­tack.

In De­cem­ber 2017, Shan­ti Roopc­hand, 45, nar­row­ly es­caped death at the hands of a close male rel­a­tive, for yet a sec­ond time.

The moth­er of three and a re­cov­er­ing stroke vic­tim had tak­en out a pro­tec­tion or­der against the 52-year-old sus­pect but it was not enough to stop to stop him from try­ing to kill Roopc­hand and stab­bing her 27-year-old son, Prem­c­hand, as he at­tempt­ed to pro­tect his moth­er. Roopc­hand was at­tacked in a sim­i­lar man­ner just one year be­fore.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, a San Fer­nan­do man was sen­tenced to four years in prison af­ter he plead­ed guilty to breach­ing a pro­tec­tion or­der and beat­ing his wife. The 46-year-old fa­ther of five claimed he was stressed and frus­trat­ed but his wife con­tend­ed that he was an­gry af­ter she got a job. Hav­ing ob­tained a pro­tec­tion or­der against the sus­pect in Ju­ly 2016, the woman said she was ac­cused of be­ing un­faith­ful.

In No­vem­ber 2019, the life­less body of Ram­ragie Gob­in, 49, was found at her Ridge­wood Gar­dens, Gol­con­da home. She had been stabbed to death by her hus­band from whom she had sep­a­rat­ed. Gob­in had tak­en out a pro­tec­tion or­der against her es­tranged hus­band.

Hours be­fore he was due to ap­pear be­fore a mag­is­trate charged with Gob­in’s death, Chaman­lal Gob­in was found hang­ing in a cell at the Mon Re­pos Po­lice Sta­tion.

And while Hack­ett, Roopc­hand, Gob­in and thou­sands of women and men have gone to court in T&T to ob­tain pro­tec­tion or­ders against spous­es and part­ners, the ques­tion aris­es: how ef­fec­tive is this piece of pa­per? Does the pro­tec­tion or­der of­fer the ap­pli­cant any lev­el of pro­tec­tion? Does it on­ly serve to fu­el the re­spon­dents' anger and spur them to dead­ly ac­tion?

A pro­tec­tion or re­strain­ing or­der is a court doc­u­ment which re­strains a per­son from en­gag­ing in abu­sive be­hav­iour of any type. It may al­so re­quire the in­di­vid­ual to stay a cer­tain dis­tance away from in­di­vid­ual who ob­tained the oder. The pro­tec­tion or­der is ob­tained by mak­ing an apli­ca­tion to the Clerk of the Peace of the Dis­trict Mag­is­trate Court in the area where you live.

'It has no weight, no teeth and does not pre­vent acts of vi­o­lence'

A ju­di­cial of­fi­cer, who did not want to be named, told Guardian Me­dia, "It is on­ly a piece of pa­per and it does not re­al­ly pro­tect you. The per­son that you have tak­en out the re­strain­ing or­der against can do you any­thing they want and just face the con­se­quences af­ter."

Ac­cord­ing to the fe­male of­fi­cial, "It does not pro­tect against do­mes­tic vi­o­lence."

Sh­er­na Alexan­der Ben­jamin of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als (OABI) agreed. "That is re­al­ly cor­rect. It is ba­si­cal­ly a piece of pa­per that has no weight, it has no teeth and it does not pre­vent the acts of se­vere vi­o­lence be­ing per­pe­trat­ed against the in­di­vid­ual who took out the re­strain­ing or­der."

Call­ing for leg­isla­tive changes which would see a more in­clu­sive and col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, Ben­jamin said it must be made a pri­or­i­ty by the State.

De­clar­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence was a se­ri­ous prob­lem in T&T, she said, "The pro­tec­tion or­der in and of it­self, does not pro­tect the vic­tim. And there are no im­ple­men­ta­tion process­es to mon­i­tor or to track the in­di­vid­ual who took out the or­der in a way of pro­tect­ing them from the per­pe­tra­tor."

Ben­jamin said while each per­son is re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing there are cer­tain safe­ty/se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in place, she added, "We al­so have to call in­to ac­count the law en­force­ment agen­cies to step up their game and im­ple­ment mea­sures, and al­so change or en­hance ex­ist­ing sys­tems in ad­dress­ing vi­o­lence against women."

She urged sit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tions to stop mak­ing the is­sue a po­lit­i­cal one, and fo­cus on mak­ing the coun­try safer for both fe­males and males.

Ben­jamin said the time had come for rel­e­vant dis­cus­sions as we have to work with our men and boys to un­der­stand their own emo­tions; to un­der­stand how to re­duce con­flict so that it will not turn in­to the vi­o­lent man­i­fes­ta­tions that cause harm and dan­ger to some­body else’s life.

"Of­ten times, the blame for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence some­how shifts to the vic­tim and is moved from the per­pe­tra­tor."

Pro­tec­tion or­der re­quests have de­clined...a per­cep­tion that the sys­tem is not re­al­ly work­ing

Com­ment­ing on the lack of ju­di­cial sta­tis­tics, pres­i­dent of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, Rober­ta Clarke said, "There is no way to know how many pro­tec­tion or­ders are grant­ed. What we can tell from the Ju­di­cia­ry's An­nu­al Re­port is how many ap­pli­ca­tions are made. And while they will state that 70 per cent or so are dis­posed of, they don't say what this means."

Clarke claimed that over the last few years, pro­tec­tion or­der re­quests had de­clined from around 10,000 five years ago, down to just about 8,000.

She said there was a per­cep­tion that the sys­tem it­self is not re­al­ly work­ing very well which is why the Chief Jus­tice is think­ing of start­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of court for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

In an in­ter­view last week, Clarke said one in every three women in T&T suf­fer or will suf­fer from do­mes­tic vi­o­lence at the hands of their part­ner

She said the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank re­cent­ly said at any giv­en time around the world, 10,000 women are in sit­u­a­tions of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

The Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als (OABI)

As the year 2019 fast ap­proach­es its’end, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Abused and Bat­tered In­di­vid­u­als said it was alarmed by the in­creas­ing vi­o­lence with­in so­ci­ety.

Dur­ing a meet­ing on No­vem­ber 23, leader Sh­er­na Alexan­der Ben­jamin quot­ed alarm­ing sta­tis­tics from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Unit (CA­PA), TTPS which in­di­cat­ed that dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010 to 2015 there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11,441 re­ports re­lat­ing to Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (In­ti­mate Part­ner Vi­o­lence) (DV/IPV).

Of this fig­ure, there were 131 re­lat­ed deaths.

In 2018, sta­tis­tics from CA­PA in­di­cat­ed that an av­er­age of 25 women were mur­dered every year in DV/IPV re­lat­ed cas­es.

At the end of 2017, there was a to­tal of 52 mur­ders of women; with 43 be­ing DV/IPV re­lat­ed.

Sta­tis­tics in­di­cat­ed that from Jan­u­ary 2018 to No­vem­ber 2018, 22 DV/IPV deaths were record­ed.

Some women who were robbed of not on­ly their lives but their dreams in 2018:

1) Dru­patee Sankar (hands sev­ered; alive but crit­i­cal - Jan 1, 2018);

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

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

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

5) Sarah Joseph (was re­port­ed miss­ing on Jan 20; 2018; Was found shot on Jan 23, 2018; and her body wrapped in a sheet and dumped); and

6) Kay­la Marie Solomon-Caine of Lam­beau, To­ba­go (blud­geoned to death, Feb 2, 2018),

Claim­ing that 2019 sta­tis­tics were not yet avail­able, the mem­bers ac­knowl­edged they faced a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge ahead.

Aim­ing to ex­pand its mem­ber­ship to in­clude more youths as well as ma­ture cit­i­zens, the OABI said it would fo­cus on:

• Sen­si­ti­sa­tion and ed­u­ca­tion at all lev­els;

• Rec­om­men­da­tions for pol­i­cy changes;

• More re­search in­to the prob­lem us­ing a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary per­spec­tive;

• Ex­pan­sion and out­reach in­clud­ing ‘twin­ning’;

• Mov­ing in­to com­mu­ni­ties as part of ‘com­mu­ni­ty gov­er­nance’;

• Putting a voice for ‘bat­tered women and chil­dren’ in the Sen­ate.

BOX
What is do­mes­tic vi­o­lence?

A. In­cludes any form of abuse whether it be men­tal, ver­bal, phys­i­cal, sex­u­al, fi­nan­cial, emo­tion­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal, com­mit­ted by a per­son against a spouse, child, and any oth­er per­son who is a mem­ber of the house­hold or de­pen­dant.

What is a pro­tec­tion/re­strain­ing or­der?

A. A pro­tec­tion or re­strain­ing or­der is a court doc­u­ment which re­strains a per­son from en­gag­ing in abu­sive be­hav­iour of any type.

Where do you go to ap­ply for a re­strain­ing or­der?

A. To the Clerk of the Peace of the Dis­trict Mag­is­trate Court in which you live.

Who can ap­ply for a pro­tec­tion or­der?

A. A Spouse; a mem­ber of the spouse’s house­hold ie, a child; a de­pen­dant; a par­ent or sib­ling of ei­ther the spouse or re­spon­dent of that sib­ling or par­ent who is not a mem­ber of the house­hold; a per­son who has a child in com­mon with the re­spon­dent; a per­son who is or has been in a vis­it­ing re­la­tion­ship with a per­son of the op­po­site sex for a pe­ri­od ex­ceed­ing twelve months; a po­lice of­fi­cer, a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer or ap­proved so­cial work­er on be­half of an al­leged vic­tim.

What is the pro­ce­dure to ob­tain a pro­tec­tion or­der?

A. The pro­ce­dure to ob­tain a pro­tec­tion or­der is list­ed as fol­lows:

i. The ap­pli­cant goes to the court’s reg­istry at the re­spec­tive Mag­is­trate’s Court;

ii. The ap­pli­cant speaks to the Clerk of the Peace, who iden­ti­fies the prob­lem and de­ter­mines whether it is a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ter or a mat­ter for an­oth­er court;

iii. Ap­pli­cant pays $3.00 in cash or the val­ue of $3.00 in stamps for fil­ing a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence com­plaint;

iv. The Clerk of the Peace then pre­pares the com­plaint and sum­mons and at the same time fix­es the date of hear­ing with­in sev­en days of fil­ing of the ap­pli­ca­tion;

v. The ap­pli­cant is re­quired to sign the com­plaint;

vi. The ap­pli­cant takes the sum­mons to be served on re­spon­dent to the po­lice or may be served by the ap­pli­cant or his/her agent;

What in­for­ma­tion is re­quired when ap­ply­ing for a pro­tec­tion or­der?

A. The par­ties cor­rect name and ad­dress and a spe­cif­ic time of at least six months be­fore fil­ing when the in­ci­dent/pat­tern of be­hav­iour oc­curred.

What is the du­ra­tion of a pro­tec­tion or­der?

A. A pro­tec­tion or­der re­mains in force for any pe­ri­od spec­i­fied by the court, but such pe­ri­od shall not ex­ceed three years.

(www.tt­law­courts.org)