Sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice's Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) re­vealed that an av­er­age of 25 women were mur­dered every year in DV/IPV (do­mes­tic vi­o­lence or in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence) cas­es in 2018.

The Na­tion­al Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Hot­line re­ceived 25,257 calls be­tween Oc­to­ber 2013 and Sep­tem­ber 2018.

Many abused women seek a safer place. Set­ting up a shel­ter for abused women pro­vides safe­ty for women and their chil­dren es­cap­ing do­mes­tic abuse. This process en­tails find­ing a se­cure lo­ca­tion, ob­tain­ing gov­ern­ment per­mis­sion, ob­tain­ing fund­ing, get­ting the right work­ers, and net­work­ing with re­lat­ed agen­cies.

The Shel­ter for Bat­tered Women and Chil­dren was es­tab­lished in 1987 by Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att as a safe haven for women and chil­dren who are vic­tims of all forms of

do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Its mis­sion is to sup­port vic­tims in their tran­si­tion from vic­tims to sur­vivors and sur­vivors in­to suc­cess sto­ries.

The shel­ter was cre­at­ed in re­sponse to grow­ing aware­ness of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and a greater need for sup­port of vic­tims. The shel­ter op­er­ates a safe house, grant­ed to it by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for res­i­dents, staff quar­ters, a coun­selling room, chil­dren's ac­tiv­i­ty room, and train­ing room.

As a reg­is­tered char­i­ty, the shel­ter is run by an ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee of vol­un­teers. Al­though it re­ceives quar­ter­ly sub­ven­tions from the Gov­ern­ment, as well as do­na­tions, both cor­po­rate and pri­vate, the funds gen­er­at­ed are usu­al­ly in­ad­e­quate giv­en the grow­ing need and the ex­tent of the ser­vices that it cur­rent­ly pro­vides and wish­es to pro­vide to the vic­tims. The shel­ter there­fore ac­tive­ly fundrais­es by host­ing sev­er­al events through­out the year.

Over the years, the shel­ter has be­come the leader in de­vel­op­ing a range of ser­vices nec­es­sary to trans­form the lives of its res­i­dents. Be­cause of the pro­to­cols and sys­tems it has de­vel­oped, oth­er shel­ters of­ten re­ly on this shel­ter for ad­vice and guid­ance.

Shel­ters clos­ing down

Al­though a 2018 Na­tion­al Women's Health Sur­vey for T&T found that one in three women in the coun­try said they ex­pe­ri­enced in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence, out of 14 shel­ters in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go, four shel­ters were closed pri­mar­i­ly due to a lack of fund­ing.

Founder of Con­flict Women, Asiya Mo­hammed said while the Gov­ern­ment promised new shel­ters would be built in the 2019/2020 bud­get, there need­ed to be more state sup­port for the shel­ters that cur­rent­ly ex­ist­ed.

Pres­i­dent of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, Rober­ta Clarke said Mad­i­nah House was closed, the Shel­ter for Bat­tered Women and Chil­dren was closed for ren­o­va­tion,and the Hope Shel­ter had to re­duce its in­take by 50 per cent.

Chair­man of the Shel­ter for Bat­tered Women and Chil­dren, Scott Hamil­ton said there was one more—Bertha House which was not ful­ly closed but head­ing that way.

Speak­ing at Guardian Me­dia's of­fice on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, Hamil­ton said "What we need is fund­ing, it's al­ways the most in­te­gral part of any shel­ter. To run a shel­ter is ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive, and it takes a sub­stan­tial amount of funds and vol­un­teers to make it work.

"Al­though we have in­creased and ex­pand­ed our fundrais­ing and out­reach ini­tia­tives quite sub­stan­tial­ly over the years, it takes lots of mon­ey to main­tain the women and chil­dren on a dai­ly ba­sis—from giv­ing them nu­tri­tious meals, cloth­ing, trans­porta­tion, health­care, plac­ing the chil­dren in­to schools, med­ical and men­tal health needs, as well as as­sist­ing the women in find­ing hous­ing and gain­ing em­ploy­ment."

He said the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to open more shel­ters, but what about the shel­ters that were al­ready in op­er­a­tion and were not re­ceiv­ing ad­e­quate fund­ing.

He said com­mit­tee mem­bers were all vol­un­teers, they were not paid and did this "out of the good­ness of their heart."

Hamil­ton said it was very dif­fi­cult as the shel­ter need­ed to pro­vide so many ser­vices to these women and chil­dren and there were so many so­cial and eco­nom­ic prob­lems that had to be dealt with.

He said right now the shel­ter was closed to res­i­dents be­cause the house was over 60 years old. Oth­er shel­ters are al­so very old.

Hamil­ton said such hous­es may be loaned to stake­hold­ers or giv­en to them through a Cab­i­net minute but they need­ed ex­ten­sive re­pairs.

"When we re­open the shel­ter, we will have space for 19 women and chil­dren of­fer­ing them a safe, clean and wel­com­ing en­vi­ron­ment with well trained pro­fes­sion­al staff that can cater to their spe­cial needs con­sist­ing of coun­sel­lors and so­cial work­ers. This cost is ex­or­bi­tant.

"The Gov­ern­ment gives us a month­ly sub­ven­tion of $7,500, but while we are grate­ful, it is not enough.

"That is one of the rea­sons why many of the shel­ters have reached that point. We can on­ly do so much. It would take an av­er­age of $500,000 plus to run a shel­ter prop­er­ly.

"For ex­am­ple, the cost of ren­o­va­tions for our shel­ter is over $1.4 m which does not in­clude what was com­plet­ed be­fore. I am ap­peal­ing to pri­vate cit­i­zens, the cor­po­rate world as well as the Gov­ern­ment for help."

Hamil­ton said ma­jor ren­o­va­tions had to take place from the roof, elec­tri­cal wiring, in­te­ri­or re­mod­el­ling, floor­ing etc. For the last year and a half the shel­ter had been rais­ing funds through var­i­ous events such as the shel­ter’s Wine and Cheese Ex­pe­ri­ence which is usu­al­ly held by Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion in March, a Back in Time par­ty in Sep­tem­ber and a golf tour­na­ment in No­vem­ber.

He said funds were al­so raised via do­na­tion tins dis­trib­uted through­out the North West and through the kind do­na­tions of good Samar­i­tans, deeds of covenant from sev­er­al peo­ple and pub­lic do­na­tions through the shel­ter’s bank ac­counts.

Hamil­ton said they reached out to ar­chi­tects Mau­reen Legge and Colvin Chen who gave them ma­jor sup­port in re­design­ing the shel­ter. Last year a part of the shel­ter was com­plet­ed and named the Saman­tha Isaacs Learn­ing Cen­tre. Isaacs was a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. This was achieved through do­na­tions from the Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion and the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion.

He said, how­ev­er, that ren­o­va­tions will com­mence once they re­ceive gov­ern­ment ap­proval from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the re­new­al of the Cab­i­net minute that grant­ed the prop­er­ty to be used as a shel­ter. This was al­so hold­ing up the process, he said.

Hamil­ton said they were hop­ing to get a meet­ing with Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, the new Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MOS­DFS).

Hamil­ton said they al­so reached out to MP for North/St Ann's West Stu­art Young who helped them tremen­dous­ly by putting for­ward their re­quest and let­ters to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (MPA) and to Claudelle Mc Kel­lar, the act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary. Once all the ap­provals are ready ren­o­va­tions on the shel­ter will start in earnest, he said.

Camille Robin­son-Reg­is

When Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MOS­DFS) Camille Robin­son-Reg­is was con­tact­ed via What­sapp on Thurs­day for a com­ment on whether the gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions for shel­ters can be in­creased, she replied "Not­ed. We shall re­vert im­mi­nent­ly."

How to get help

If you or some­one you know may be a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, there are re­sources to get help:

•Trinidad Shel­ter for Bat­tered Women and Chil­dren

(628-1116)

•Safe Hori­zon (621-HOPE/4673)

•The Halfway House (650-2684)