Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing a sec­ond do­mes­tic-vi­o­lence mur­der-sui­cide in un­der a month, ad­vo­cates are rais­ing ur­gent ques­tions about whether po­lice and so­cial-ser­vice sys­tems are work­ing—or fail­ing those at risk.

The lat­est tragedy in­volved 36-year-old An­gel Lutch­man, who was killed by her part­ner, Shaz­ard Mo­hammed, who then took his own life at Lutch­man’s Clax­ton Bay home.

Their bod­ies were dis­cov­ered on Mon­day, around 7 am, by Lutch­man’s 11-year-old son.

Gen­der and child jus­tice ad­vo­cate Mar­cus Kissoon warned that such in­ci­dents of­ten fol­low a dan­ger­ous “rip­ple ef­fect,” show­ing that do­mes­tic and in­ti­mate-part­ner vi­o­lence ought not to be dis­missed as a pri­vate mat­ter or “lovers’ quar­rel” but are struc­tur­al is­sues de­mand­ing proac­tive state in­ter­ven­tion.

“I am call­ing on the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty to car­ry out a ro­bust in-house re­view of the da­ta, pro­to­cols and out­comes as­so­ci­at­ed with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, fam­i­ly vi­o­lence and in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence cas­es.”

Kissoon said the state must analyse the ef­fec­tive­ness of its own sys­tems, in­clud­ing TTPS re­spons­es, and de­ter­mine whether cur­rent prac­tices ac­tu­al­ly in­ter­rupt es­ca­lat­ing risk or sim­ply man­age it at its break­ing point.

While there is an ad­e­quate do­mes­tic vi­o­lence law and even poli­cies, Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV) Pres­i­dent Rober­ta Clarke ques­tioned whether they are be­ing ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

“CADV has re­peat­ed­ly called for a process of im­me­di­ate and ur­gent re­view in cas­es like this so that we can un­der­stand bet­ter not on­ly the signs but al­so how to im­prove fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty and gov­ern­men­tal re­spons­es to stop do­mes­tic vi­o­lence,” she said.

Em­pha­sis­ing that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is not about ro­mance gone bad, Clarke said vi­o­lence is used to over­pow­er and con­trol fam­i­ly mem­bers, es­pe­cial­ly women in in­ti­mate part­ner­ships.

She al­so called for im­me­di­ate and ad­e­quate state sup­port for Lutch­man’s son.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) not­ed that jeal­ousy in re­la­tion­ships of­ten stems from nar­cis­sism and pos­ses­sive­ness.

IWRN Pres­i­dent Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan said many women no­tice these warn­ing signs ear­ly but ig­nore them, hop­ing the part­ner will change, mis­tak­ing con­trol for love.

Be­hav­iours like con­stant mon­i­tor­ing, iso­la­tion, ex­treme jeal­ousy, emo­tion­al ma­nip­u­la­tion, con­trol and ero­sion of trust, she said, are clear red flags and urged those ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this to leave the re­la­tion­ship.

She ad­vised vic­tims to seek sup­port from IWRN through their Face­book page.

Mean­while, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day said too many women live in fear long be­fore a sin­gle blow is struck.

Adding that vic­tim-blam­ing is au­to­mat­ic in T&T’s cul­ture, she said, “We in­ter­ro­gate women about their choic­es, but we rarely in­ter­ro­gate men about their be­hav­iour. The re­al ques­tion is, why did he choose to con­trol, threat­en or harm her in the first place? Ac­count­abil­i­ty must start where the vi­o­lence starts, with the per­pe­tra­tor.”

While men are al­so vic­tims, she said us­ing men’s ex­pe­ri­ences as a way to min­imise or dis­miss the vi­o­lence over­whelm­ing­ly faced by women is dan­ger­ous.

She called on the po­lice to treat every re­port with ur­gency, en­force pro­tec­tion or­ders and ex­pand the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit so women feel safe com­ing for­ward.

She said the gov­ern­ment must in­crease safe hous­es, pro­vide fi­nan­cial sup­port for women try­ing to leave, strength­en and en­force laws, cre­ate re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes for abusers and teach healthy re­la­tion­ships in schools to break the cy­cle for the next gen­er­a­tion.

When asked by re­porters whether al­co­hol could be con­nect­ed to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had no ev­i­dence or re­search to sup­port that the­o­ry but said, “Maybe it is so.”

Mean­while, Lutch­man’s broth­er Mark said they were told that au­top­sies were not done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day be­cause there is a back­log.

On No­vem­ber 23, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Coun­cil­lor Romona Vic­tor, 36, and her com­mon-law hus­band, Rod­ney Ram­sumair, 45, were found dead in their Siparia home in an ap­par­ent mur­der-sui­cide.

An au­top­sy re­vealed Vic­tor died from blunt force trau­ma to the head and neck, while Ram­sumair died from poi­son­ing.