Shereen Ali

One in every three women you meet is trau­ma­tised by vi­o­lence. This is ev­i­dent from a fright­en­ing World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) sta­tis­tic: more than a third of all women world­wide (35 per cent) have been at­tacked vi­o­lent­ly by their in­ti­mate part­ners, or have ex­pe­ri­enced sex­u­al vi­o­lence from a non-part­ner. Glob­al­ly, the WHO tells us, in­ti­mate part­ners com­mit as many as 38 per cent of wom­ens' mur­ders.

Far from be­ing a pri­vate mat­ter, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is a ma­jor pub­lic health prob­lem af­fect­ing whole fam­i­lies and so­ci­eties over time, say ex­perts. And al­though men are said to com­mit a lot of the vi­o­lence, women can be guilty too, and vic­tims can in­clude chil­dren, old peo­ple, and any­one liv­ing in the home of an abuser. Feel­ings of shame and se­cre­cy with­in fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties of­ten mask the prob­lem un­til it's too late.

In the Caribbean, of those women who have been at­tacked by part­ners, 28 to 64 per cent of them do not even seek help or speak to any­one about the at­tacks. This is ac­cord­ing to a 2013 re­port by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) cit­ed in a March 2014 re­search note by The Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

In T&T, be­tween 2009 and 2012, al­most 12,000 do­mes­tic vi­o­lence ap­pli­ca­tions were made in the Mag­is­trate's Court, ac­cord­ing to a re­port by a group called the NGO Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (NCDF), which re­cent­ly com­plet­ed a five-year Vi­o­lence Against Women cam­paign.

The cam­paign in­volved con­sult­ing a wide range of NGOs from Ja­maica, T&T, Suri­name and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, and re­sult­ed in a re­port called The Cas­ca­dia Pro­to­col, sub­mit­ted to re­gion­al gov­ern­ments. A main rec­om­men­da­tion was the need for trained Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Units in the po­lice ser­vice.

The NCDF re­ports that NGOs want gov­ern­ments to lis­ten to their ad­vice, and make bet­ter use of their skills. Such groups have been work­ing di­rect­ly with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims for a long time, and have the ex­pe­ri­ence, com­mit­ment and flex­i­bil­i­ty to be more ef­fec­tive than well-in­ten­tioned but of­ten in­flex­i­ble and lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment de­part­ments, says the NCDF.

Grop­ing in the dark: The need for da­ta

"I can't speak for any­one, but for my­self, I feel we're all just grop­ing in the dark. Every now and then, we be­come out­raged when we hear about a par­tic­u­lar case in the me­dia; there's a lot of furore; and then it dies down. There is no sys­tem­at­ic way of col­lect­ing da­ta. The da­ta is frag­ment­ed: you might get some from the mag­is­trates court, from so­cial work­ers, but noth­ing is pooled and analysed," said ac­coun­tant and so­cial jus­tice ac­tivist Car­ol Daniel in a Guardian in­ter­view at the NCDF's of­fice in Tu­na­puna.

Car­ol Daniel found­ed the NCDF in 2007 to help de­vel­op ca­pac­i­ty of a range of NGOs in the re­gion. And she's pas­sion­ate about the Cas­ca­dia Pro­to­col rec­om­men­da­tions, es­pe­cial­ly the need to take do­mes­tic vi­o­lence se­ri­ous­ly enough to mea­sure it prop­er­ly.

"We need to col­lect da­ta in a sys­tem­at­ic way, from dif­fer­ent sec­tors–health, po­lice, ju­di­cia­ry, from across the board; and have one body col­late that da­ta and analyse it. Then we'd have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what we're deal­ing with," she said.

Bring a Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Unit

"The most im­por­tant rec­om­men­da­tion for me is the one that re­lates to the po­lice: the cre­ation of a Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Unit," said Daniel.

"This is not a new idea...There have been ex­per­i­ments, but I would like to see it ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed. More man­pow­er needs to be put to­wards the is­sue of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence."

"Al­so im­por­tant for me is the abil­i­ty to charge a sus­pect with­out di­rect in­put from the vic­tim," said Daniel, "so that the po­lice can go ahead and build a case and not have to re­ly ex­clu­sive­ly on the vic­tim to tes­ti­fy. Be­cause of­ten the vic­tim is in­tim­i­dat­ed, her liveli­hood may be af­fect­ed.

"I would like to see them be able to charge a sus­pect with­out re­ly­ing 100 per cent on the vic­tim to tes­ti­fy....The po­lice may stand a bet­ter chance of go­ing through the sys­tem and com­plete­ly pros­e­cut­ing some­one and hav­ing that per­son pay for the crime. If it is to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on the vic­tim, there's a strong chance that the vic­tim will not tes­ti­fy when that time comes–and the case falls apart."

Don't rein­vent the wheel,ask those in the field al­ready

Daniel echoes the calls of oth­er re­gion­al NGOs for gov­ern­ments to har­ness the NGO sec­tor bet­ter.

"I see an at­tempt by some gov­ern­ment de­part­ments to do the work of the NGO sec­tor. But I think the NGO sec­tor is best placed to work with vic­tims. NGOs do it be­cause they are very com­mit­ted to it. It's not just an av­enue to earn a liv­ing. Many of us don't earn a liv­ing from this work. We do it be­cause we are con­vinced it needs to be done. We make sac­ri­fices in or­der to do it."

"A sys­tem needs to be set up where gov­ern­ments fun­nel mon­ey to the sec­tor and treat the sec­tor like an equal part­ner in work­ing on so­cial is­sues, rather than em­bark­ing on it them­selves," said Daniel.

She said vic­tims need sen­si­tiv­i­ty and sup­port, and "they need some­one to be there for them at three in the morn­ing; gov­ern­ment de­part­ments can't do that. For them to at­tempt to do that is to waste the tax­pay­er's mon­ey."

"So the sec­tor needs to be re­sourced. It will work out as an eco­nom­ic ad­van­tage for gov­ern­ments to re­source the sec­tor and just let them go ahead and do it."

Deal with vi­o­len­cein the fam­i­ly and in men

A key part of deal­ing with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is tak­ing a look at our home be­hav­iour. This in­cludes ac­knowl­edg­ing the vi­o­lence, anger man­age­ment prob­lems, and cul­ture of en­ti­tle­ment of many West In­di­an men, who of­ten have prej­u­diced at­ti­tudes about the role of women. It al­so in­volves deal­ing with the de­struc­tive ef­fect of vi­o­lence on chil­dren, which can be deep and last­ing.

Daniel be­lieves vi­o­lence in the home im­pacts na­tion­al crime fig­ures: "I think if young peo­ple grow up in a home that is vi­o­lent, they are de­sen­si­tised, and they are more like­ly to com­mit crime in the long term." She ar­gues for an ap­proach to crime-fight­ing which ad­dress­es vi­o­lence in the fam­i­ly.

To ad­dress vi­o­lence by men to­wards their fam­i­ly, the NCDF held a work­shop last De­cem­ber, A Call to Men, led by UK psy­chol­o­gist Jonathan Fowler. The work­shop trained par­tic­i­pants in how to re­ha­bil­i­tate men with a his­to­ry of vi­o­lence with­in the fam­i­ly, us­ing an ap­proach that has been suc­cess­ful in the US and else­where. The NCDF hopes to bring Fowler back to the Caribbean for more "one-on-one" train­ing with in­di­vid­ual NGOs.

"I think here in T&T, we have come to the point where women are dy­ing. And it didn't sud­den­ly hap­pen overnight where a spouse wakes up and de­cides: 'To­day I'm go­ing to kill you.' It's a pat­tern of abuse that ends in death," says Daniel.

"I don't think vi­o­lence against women is a woman's is­sue or a man's is­sue. It's a so­cial and na­tion­al is­sue. It's a pat­tern of fam­i­ly life and qual­i­ty of life that im­pacts the lev­el of crime in the coun­try."

�2 TO­MOR­ROW: Sum­ma­ry of the Cas­ca­dia Pro­to­col

Who is Car­ol Daniel?

Car­ol Daniel was born in the UK to West In­di­an stu­dents (her moth­er is Ba­jan, her fa­ther is from T&T). The fam­i­ly grew up in T&T, in Mount Lam­bert.

Daniel stud­ied so­ci­ol­o­gy and his­to­ry for her first de­gree, and says she got in­to the fi­nan­cial world by ac­ci­dent: her un­cle owned his own busi­ness in Bar­ba­dos, of which Price Wa­ter­house were his au­di­tors, and one evening he told her: "Price Wa­ter­house needs au­dit trainees. You start on Mon­day."

She went on to be­come a fi­nan­cial ac­coun­tant, work­ing at De­loitte and PwC (Price Wa­ter­house) in Bar­ba­dos. While there, she joined a small Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al group which piqued her in­ter­est in so­cial jus­tice is­sues.

She left Bar­ba­dos in 1997 and moved to Lon­don, to gain in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence in her pro­fes­sion. Af­ter a year of au­dit work, she spe­cialised in Eng­land's well de­vel­oped, re­spect­ed NGO sec­tor, do­ing fi­nan­cial con­sult­ing and project man­age­ment work for NGOs there, and do­ing some more work with Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al.

On her re­turn to the Caribbean in 2007, Daniel quick­ly be­came in­volved with NGOs here, com­bin­ing her fi­nan­cial train­ing with her so­cial jus­tice in­ter­ests. She found­ed the NGO Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (NCDF) in 2007, to help small char­i­ties and non-gov­ern­men­tal groups to de­vel­op.

Many of these groups suf­fer from scarce re­sources, skills, labour, and low sup­port from re­gion­al gov­ern­ments. The NCDF works main­ly to help such groups be­come stronger, through help­ing them to cre­ate work plans, cam­paign strate­gies and im­ple­ment re­gion­al cam­paigns.

The NCDF cur­rent­ly works with hu­man rights groups (in­clud­ing Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al in Ja­maica, Ba­hamas and Bar­ba­dos) and many groups fight­ing against do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in the re­gion (in­clud­ing Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion and the Rape Cri­sis cen­tre in Trinidad, and many women's shel­ters in Trinidad, Ja­maica and else­where).

The NCDF board con­sists of: pres­i­dent and founder–Car­ol Daniel; vice pres­i­dent–Witek Hebanows­ki; cor­po­rate sec­re­tary–Sr Mary Claire Zit­man; and le­gal di­rec­tor–Al­ice Daniel.

�2 MORE IN­FO: The NCDF is based at 42 Balt­haz­ar Street, Tu­na­puna. Tel: 792-2089. Email: con­tact@ngo­caribbean.org. Web­site: www.ngo­caribbean.org