Zahra Gor­don

Be­tween 2010 and 2011 there was a five per cent in­crease in the di­vorce rate. Ac­cord­ing to the Ju­di­cia­ry An­nu­al Re­port 2010-2011, there were 2,857 new di­vorce cas­es filed, up from 2,731 in the 2009-2010 law term. When Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie re­vealed the sta­tis­tics at the launch of the new term in Sep­tem­ber it caused a stir, with many heads of re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions and fam­i­ly coun­sel­lors speak­ing pub­licly on the top­ic.

How­ev­er, Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta on di­vorce avail­able on their Web site show that the steep­est in­crease in the di­vorce rate since 1986 oc­curred be­tween 2004 and 2005 when the num­ber of di­vorces jumped from 1,852 to 2,785. Be­tween 1986 and 2004 the num­ber of di­vorces fluc­tu­at­ed be­tween 1,074 to 1,852. Be­tween 2005 and 2011 the rate has fluc­tu­at­ed.

Canon John Ro­him of St Michael's & All An­gels An­gli­can Church in Diego Mar­tin told the T&T Guardian he ob­served an in­crease in the num­ber of mar­ried cou­ples seek­ing his coun­sel or ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ty.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view Ro­him said the mod­ern lifestyle was con­tribut­ing to the de­struc­tion of the tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly. "Every­body is busy. We rush to work, rush to eat, rush to bed and there is no com­mu­ni­ca­tion and no qual­i­ty time. We are liv­ing in a time where progress brings hurt and de­stroys the fam­i­ly as well," he said.

Ro­him added: "There is a de­val­u­a­tion of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween hus­band and wife tak­ing place. The thing about love is that it's an on­go­ing process of lov­ing and car­ing and I feel we have de­val­ued in­ti­ma­cy."

Analysing the cause of the in­crease in di­vorce may be more dif­fi­cult than meets the eye. How­ev­er, Dr Pa­tri­cia El­der, di­rec­tor of El­der As­so­ciates Ltd said cau­tion needs to be tak­en when as­sess­ing hu­man be­hav­iour. "You can't just look at one piece of da­ta and gen­er­alise for the en­tire pop­u­la­tion," she told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view. "The rea­sons for the di­vorce would af­fect why peo­ple are get­ting di­vorced. Not all di­vorces are equal and you need to look at oth­er vari­ables to un­der­stand what the sta­tis­tics are say­ing."

At­tor­ney Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai of Hove & As­so­ciates said the main ground for di­vorces he han­dles is be­hav­iour. "This means the per­son ap­ply­ing for di­vorce finds it un­bear­able to live with their part­ner and these be­hav­iours do in­clude do­mes­tic vi­o­lence," he said.

Ma­sai­sai be­lieved the in­crease in the crime rate can be one con­tribut­ing fac­tor. "We live in a so­ci­ety in which the crime is very high. Peo­ple are now vi­o­lent with­out fear and this trans­lates in­to the home and the so­ci­ety in which we live has af­fect­ed the break­down in the fam­i­ly struc­ture."

Al­though the re­port showed a de­crease in the num­ber of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es, dur­ing 2009-2010 there were 12,106 re­ports while in 2010-2011 there were 11,984. The num­ber of re­ports has been steadi­ly in­creas­ing since 2005 when there were 9950 re­ports of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es. In 2006-2007 there were 10,785 and in 2008-2009 there were 11,629.

In a re­cent ad­dress to the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Dr Ed­ward Greene, UN Spe­cial En­voy for HIV in the Caribbean said stud­ies have shown that one in three women in the Caribbean on av­er­age will ex­pe­ri­ence do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. He added that coun­try stud­ies for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Guyana, British Vir­gin Is­lands and Suri­name sug­gest that be­tween 20 and 69 per cent of women in in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ships have been vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Mar­riage and fam­i­ly coun­sel­lor Noe­line Hus­bands said in the past two years she has no­ticed an in­crease in the num­ber of mar­ried clients she as­sists. Ac­cord­ing to Hus­bands, the main prob­lem is usu­al­ly in­fi­deli­ty. How­ev­er, she does not think this means monogamy is a thing of the past.

"Pre­vi­ous­ly I think peo­ple would have had the moral val­ues that mar­riage was a com­mit­ment. Peo­ple are more will­ing to break that com­mit­ment these days," she said. "There isn't that spir­i­tu­al com­mit­ment and there are so many op­por­tu­ni­ties for un­faith­ful­ness. Peo­ple are no longer will­ing to fight for a mar­riage that isn't work­ing for them."

She added that a lack of un­der­stand­ing of what mar­riage is meant to be al­so ex­ac­er­bates the is­sue. "Peo­ple have ex­pec­ta­tions of mar­riage that could be un­re­al­is­tic so that if the per­son isn't meet­ing my needs I could do bet­ter and I think its a whole break down of the fam­i­ly sys­tem. Peo­ple no longer un­der­stand the role of hus­band or wife, they don't un­der­stand it as a pri­ma­ry re­la­tion­ship."

Ro­him not­ed that there was a lack of se­ri­ous prepa­ra­tion for mar­riage not on­ly on the part of cou­ples but the mar­riage of­fi­cers as well. "For some in­sti­tu­tions, mar­riage is a busi­ness but as a mar­riage of­fi­cer you have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to spend time with these peo­ple prepar­ing them for this very im­por­tant move and I don't think that is hap­pen­ing in a lot of cas­es."