Some­times I sit with my wife, curled up on our so­fa look­ing at Net­flix movies. Hug­ging or just rest­ing our hands on each oth­er brings us in­to a zone of ut­ter peace and love. Those alone mo­ments help build re­la­tion­ships. Lov­ing hugs and gen­tle strokes re­leas­es oxy­tocin, the feel-good hor­mone. I am for­tu­nate to have been get­ting small dos­es of this from my wife Sherene for the past 41 years.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, many cou­ples are not so priv­i­leged. Their lives are filled with con­stant stress, vi­o­lence and abuse. This can cause an in­crease in their cor­ti­sol and adren­a­line hor­mones, leav­ing them in a per­pet­u­al state of fight, flight or freeze.

Many vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence (DV) know the feel­ing and re­gret­tably, some end up as vic­tims of homi­cide, the fi­nal stage of the DV spec­trum.

The slaugh­ter­ing of women by some­one they once loved is a tragedy of love.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust, there were more than 1,227 cas­es of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. There have been 28 do­mes­tic mur­ders for the year. Last week, of the sev­en fe­males at­tacked, four were killed.

Twen­ty-three days ago, Guardian Me­dia’s Kevon Felmine re­port­ed that Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence man­ag­er Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh said nu­mer­ous re­ports on do­mes­tic and gen­der-based vi­o­lence have been sub­mit­ted to the State and while there is a wealth of doc­u­men­ta­tion out­lin­ing what needs to be done, the re­al chal­lenge lies in ap­ply­ing the nec­es­sary hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources to im­ple­ment those rec­om­men­da­tions. She said prop­er train­ing for pro­tec­tive and so­cial ser­vice agen­cies is al­so es­sen­tial.

This is why I saw the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence con­sul­ta­tion held by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs at the Hy­att Re­gency re­cent­ly, more as an ex­pen­sive ex­er­cise in pub­lic re­la­tions whilst the much-need­ed ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion of ex­ist­ing plans re­mains un­met.

Whilst no gov­ern­ment agency can see what goes on be­hind closed doors, we need to have an emer­gency plan to kick in when­ev­er we are aware of any cas­es of DV.

Some­times, we may need to res­cue women from them­selves, as some fall in­to the trap of the cy­cle of abuse and are pulled back in­to the hon­ey­moon phase when the per­pe­tra­tor begs for for­give­ness, while oth­ers may de­vel­op psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors mak­ing them in­ca­pable of tear­ing them­selves away from their abuser.

To as­sist in en­cour­ag­ing some to leave, I sug­gest we can amend the law to al­low per­sons to know of a per­pe­tra­tor’s past vi­o­lent his­to­ry, as was done in the UK.

The UK’s Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Dis­clo­sure Scheme (DVDS), al­so known as “Clare’s Law,” en­ables the po­lice to dis­close in­for­ma­tion to a vic­tim or po­ten­tial vic­tim of do­mes­tic abuse about their part­ner’s or ex-part­ner’s pre­vi­ous abu­sive or vi­o­lent of­fend­ing his­to­ry.

Clare Wood, 36, was mur­dered by her ex-boyfriend on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2009. She had made nu­mer­ous dis­clo­sures to the po­lice pri­or to her death on his at­tempt­ed rape and ha­rass­ment.

Af­ter her death, it was re­vealed he had an ex­ten­sive crim­i­nal back­ground with pre­vi­ous of­fences of do­mes­tic abuse and had been im­pris­oned on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions.

Af­ter her death, Clare’s fa­ther pushed for the in­tro­duc­tion of the DVDS, which was in­tro­duced as a guide­line for po­lice across the UK in 2014.

This en­ables vic­tims, po­ten­tial vic­tims or rel­e­vant third par­ties to find out about the part­ner’s crim­i­nal his­to­ry or abu­sive past if they have rea­son to be­lieve a risk ex­ists.

The fact that leg­is­la­tion can be hur­ried­ly brought to Par­lia­ment to make the steel­pan the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and soon, to change our Coat of Arms, sure­ly means we can bring im­me­di­ate leg­is­la­tion which can save lives.

Women need to be re­mind­ed about the dan­ger signs which can be seen in po­ten­tial killers.

We should al­so in­sti­tute a sys­tem that when­ev­er a re­port is made to the po­lice, a dan­ger risk as­sess­ment on the abuser is made. Some­one deemed a high-risk per­pe­tra­tor should be giv­en a GPS bracelet which can be rent­ed as a con­di­tion of bail.

We al­so need to train women how to de­fend them­selves and our first fe­male CoP en­cour­aged to fast-track FUL ap­pli­ca­tions for those men­tal­ly fit. NGOs can as­sist in the pur­chase of firearms or State-seized guns of­fered at a re­duced price, in­stead of be­ing dis­posed of.

We need to give our daugh­ters a fight­ing chance to de­fend them­selves.

Our head­lines seem to sug­gest we are liv­ing in the worst of times and this can some­times daunt me when wit­ness­ing the re­peat­ed killings.

The time spent with my wife is cer­tain­ly the best of times. Those who ex­pe­ri­ence their zone of love, would at­test that it cer­tain­ly helps to deal with this harsh and crazy world.