peter.christopher@guardian.co.tt
Gender activist Asiya Mohammed has called for families and friends to play a greater role of intervention in abusive relationships.
“I think we all have a personal responsibility whether it is at the individual level, whether it is at the NGO level or whether it is at the government level, to do our very best to provide support to those living in abusive relationships who want to leave. They may want someone to speak to, they may require counseling,’ said the CEO of Conflict Women during an interview on the CNC 3 News last night.
Mohammed said often domestic violence victims are encouraged to stay in strained relationships with potential danger because they are told that disagreement or conflict are seen as normal.
“That’s often what we see is a huge challenge with domestic violence. Parents of the survivor, for example, may say its family business you may work this out, work hard on your marriage. They’re not recognising domestic violence as a crime,” she said.
“Also, their negative advice may have a negative impact. So what we’ve seen is many survivors may stay in abusive relationships.”
This also leads to several domestic violence incidents being under-reported, as they are simply brushed off as regular bumps in the road of romance by family and friends, Mohammed said.
Head of the Gender Based-Violence Unit in the T&T Police Service (TTPS) Shireen Pollard said recent reports of domestic violence murders were devastating.
“I think for us, me especially as a woman and for woman police officers, it could be any of us. And, of course, male victims. So the development of his gender-based violence unit is so crucial and so needed,” she said.
Pollard said the unit intends to do more follow up work so that escalations to violence will be reduced.
“We want to do a lot of preventative work, we don’t want to wait until it becomes a situation where it is violent or its physical or it is as we’ve seen recently where it’s deaths,” she said.
