Geisha Kow­lessar

There is an in­crease in the num­ber of men mak­ing re­ports of do­mes­tic abuse by women. This was re­vealed at yes­ter­day's launch of Ad­vo­cates for Safe Par­ent­hood: Im­prov­ing Re­pro­duc­tive (AS­PIRE) Re­search Find­ings and Woman of the Year Award in Port-of-Spain. Re­tired As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in charge of Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions, Mar­garet Samp­son-Browne, who now heads the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit, was named as AS­PIRE's Woman of the Year.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion's chair­man, At­tor­ney Lynette See­ber­an Suite, said de­spite the in­crease, the fig­ures are not an in­di­ca­tion that more women are be­com­ing vi­o­lent to­wards men but rather men are find­ing a voice to speak out. Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics com­piled by the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Unit (CA­PA) of the Po­lice Ser­vice for 2010, 322 men made re­ports of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. The fol­low­ing year that fig­ure in­creased dras­ti­cal­ly as there were 807 re­ports made by men.

See­ber­an Suite, who said this is a case where more men are be­com­ing more em­pow­ered, added: "More men are com­ing to the court to seek reme­dies in a sit­u­a­tion of do­mes­tic dis­pute." She said a pro­tec­tion or­der could be sought for a broad va­ri­ety of re­lief and not on­ly for pro­tec­tion against as­sault.

"It could al­so be used for reg­u­lat­ing re­la­tions with­in the home, ac­cess to prop­er­ty, oc­cu­pa­tion of the home and to reg­u­late pre­scribed be­hav­iour with­in the home," See­ber­an Suite ex­plained. Ac­cord­ing to Ca­pa's 2010 sta­tis­tics, there were 1,404 do­mes­tic re­lat­ed of­fences rang­ing from mur­der/homi­cide, to child abuse and aban­don­ment, to breach of pro­tec­tion or­ders. For 2011 that fig­ure al­most dou­bled as 2,312 of­fences were record­ed.

Sta­tis­tics al­so showed that more women were be­ing beat­en by their part­ners, as be­tween 2001 and 2011 as­sault by beat­ing in­creased by 37 per cent. As­sault by beat­ing al­so car­ried the high­est fig­ures for both years as in 2010 as there were 849 re­ports and 1,242 were record­ed the fol­low­ing year. There was al­so a dis­turb­ing up­ward trend in the cat­e­go­ry of ver­bal abuse, as in 2010 there were 282 re­ports, while for 2011 that fig­ure sky­rock­et­ed to 780 re­ports.

Con­trary to the pop­u­lar per­cep­tion that peo­ple of East In­di­an ori­gin are more prone to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, da­ta showed oth­er­wise. In 2010, 563 do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in­ci­dents were record­ed which in­volved Afro Trinida­di­ans, while there were 590 re­ports in­volv­ing East In­di­ans.

For 2011, there were 908 in­ci­dents in­volv­ing Afro-Trinida­di­ans while 863 mat­ters were record­ed which in­volved East In­di­ans.

In fur­ther analy­sis of these par­tic­u­lar cat­e­gories, AS­PIRE's Pro­gramme Of­fi­cer Crys­tal Brizan said: "Con­trary to pop­u­lar per­cep­tion, women of Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian de­scent ei­ther suf­fer more from do­mes­tic vi­o­lence or are more like­ly to re­port it." She said, how­ev­er, this was "raw da­ta" as there is no re­al in­di­ca­tion that a par­tic­u­lar race is more prone to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

"More pro­tec­tion or­ders were al­so breached, go­ing from just 26 in 2001 to 157 in 2011. "The da­ta does not in­di­cate whether the per­cent­age of or­ders breached has risen, since it may well be that more women are now ap­ply­ing for them," Brizan said. Brizan said the is­sue of pro­tec­tion or­ders must be crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ined, and it is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant to scru­ti­nise what kind of pro­tec­tion is af­ford­ed a per­son in a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sit­u­a­tion and what is need­ed to strength­en that par­tic­u­lar le­gal mech­a­nism.