Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

The slug­gish court sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go is leav­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims ex­posed to fur­ther harm from per­pe­tra­tors.

This is the view shared by a se­nior of­fi­cial of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence.

There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,000 ap­pli­ca­tions for Pro­tec­tion Or­ders be­fore the courts in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to LATT se­nior mem­ber, Lynette See­baran-Suite, these ap­pli­ca­tions are man­gled in­to an al­ready over­whelmed court sys­tem.

Even though the first hear­ing of Pro­tec­tion Or­der ap­pli­ca­tions is to be heard with­in sev­en days, she said these mat­ters can go on for some time leav­ing vic­tims ex­posed to fur­ther harm.

“What I am sug­gest­ing is that there should be a time lim­it im­posed in leg­is­la­tion or reg­u­la­tions for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mat­ters, let us say three months,” See­baran-Suite said dur­ing a We­bi­nar yes­ter­day host­ed by LATT.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands for the pe­ri­od 2017-2018, 72 per cent of the rea­sons for ad­journ­ments record­ed were re­lat­ed to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of the mag­is­trate.

While some peo­ple are still for­tu­nate to ac­cess this av­enue of pro­tec­tion pro­vid­ed un­der the act, See­baran-Suite not­ed there are oth­ers who are not so lucky.

“If you are in a same-sex re­la­tion­ship and you are a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, you can­not avail your­self for pro­tec­tion of this leg­is­la­tion,” she said.

In ad­di­tion to per­sons in same-sex re­la­tion­ships, See­baran-Suite sug­gest­ed the cat­e­go­ry of ap­pli­cants be ex­pand­ed to in­clude chil­dren be­tween the ages of 16 and 18.

At­tor­ney Donielle Jones stat­ed she was pained by the com­ments from “some ju­di­cial of­fi­cers” to vic­tims of abuse.

The at­tor­ney said, “This is not a court of moral­i­ty so whether an ap­pli­cant is com­mit­ting adul­tery or for­ni­ca­tion is ir­rel­e­vant, it is whether he or she is be­ing abused.”

Last month alone record­ed 212 do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports, 20 few­er cas­es than the num­ber record­ed in 2019.

Head of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, Rober­ta Clarke, be­lieves even with more cas­es be­ing re­port­ed, there is still a pat­tern of un­der-polic­ing.

Clarke said, “When women make re­ports of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, crim­i­nal as­saults and threats to mur­der, the po­lice sta­tions most typ­i­cal re­sponse is to di­rect vic­tims to seek rem­e­dy un­der the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence act so in that sense Po­lice are be­hav­ing like a re­fer­ral mech­a­nism and not be­hav­ing as po­lice.”

Act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit, Claire Guy-Al­leyne, in­di­cat­ed that of­fi­cers at­tached to the unit are trained to han­dle a va­ri­ety of sit­u­a­tions.

She al­so said even though the unit is in its “em­bryo stage,” it has had both suc­cess­es and chal­lenges. One of the chal­lenges she not­ed in­clud­ed the lack of avail­able shel­ters for sur­vivors.

“I know the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter they were work­ing on a project but due to COVID, I’m not too sure where that stands now,” ac­cord­ing to Guy-Al­leyne.

Be­fore the amend­ments to the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act are sent to Par­lia­ment, LATT is hop­ing for an­oth­er round of con­sul­ta­tions with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the C-A-D-V, over 100,000 women in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in the 15 to 64 age brack­et, are es­ti­mat­ed to have ex­pe­ri­enced some type of abuse while 11,000 are like­ly to still be in an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship.

You can make a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­port by call­ing 999, 555 or via the TTPS Mo­bile App.