Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment’s Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Bill, which was passed with unan­i­mous sup­port in the Sen­ate on Mon­day night, will be de­bat­ed in the Low­er House tomor­row

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Low­er House leader Camille Robin­son–Reg­is.

The bill, which pro­posed sweep­ing changes to curb do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, was passed in the Sen­ate at 10.08 pm with Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors’ votes.

This, de­spite vig­or­ous lob­by­ing by some In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to ex­tend the bill’s pro­tec­tion to same sex (LGBT) peo­ple. This, how­ev­er, didn’t ma­te­ri­alise.

Still, the bill was passed with amend­ments. All three sides had been in sup­port of the bill and amend­ments were pro­posed by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark and In­de­pen­dents in­clud­ing Paul Richards, Hazel Thomp­son–Ahye and An­tho­ny Vieira. The bill re­quired a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage.

The bill cen­tres around im­proved con­di­tions for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims—or those at po­ten­tial threat of this—to ob­tain pro­tec­tion or­ders and emer­gency or­ders more quick­ly.

The bill ex­pands on cur­rent law on the is­sue and cov­ers 13 fur­ther cat­e­gories. This in­cludes youths over 16 (who will be able to ap­ply for pro­tec­tion or­ders on their own), peo­ple in dat­ing re­la­tion­ships, those at threat of un­wel­come in­tim­i­dat­ing con­tact via on­line/dig­i­tal or oth­er means in­clud­ing com­put­er/In­ter­net and cell phone .

Abuse of im­ages of an ap­pli­cant or their child is al­so cov­ered.

The bill al­so cov­ers is­sues re­gard­ing chil­dren more broad­ly in­clud­ing chil­dren who wit­ness do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. It al­so pro­pos­es crim­i­nal­iza­tion of an of­fence where a per­son fails to re­port to po­lice where a vul­ner­a­ble per­son( el­der­ly or in­firm) is at is­sue.

In clos­ing com­mit­tee stages of Mon­day’s de­bate, vig­or­ous de­bate oc­curred among sev­er­al In­de­pen­dents Sen­a­tors —such as An­tho­ny Vieira and Hazel Thomp­son Ahye—lob­by­ing to have Gov­ern­ment in­clude pro­tec­tion for same sex (LGBT) peo­ple in the bill. Vieira pas­sion­ate­ly ar­gued the pro­tec­tion should be for all re­gard­less of type.

Thomp­son-Ahye, who called for the bill to per­tain to “do­mes­tic re­la­tion­ships,” said it was a hu­man rights is­sue. She not­ed since Gov­ern­ment said they want­ed to pro­tect the rights all in­clud­ing those in same sex re­la­tions and had amend­ed the Sex­u­al Of­fences Bill to have gen­der eq­ui­ty, she didn’t un­der­stand Gov­ern­ment’s re­luc­tance do the same with this bill.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al- Rawi, who had about four ex­changes with them on it, ad­mit­ted it is a hu­man rights is­sues, but said he had no re­luc­tance or fear to deal with it.

He not­ed the case of Ja­son Jones which con­cerned the is­sue of qual­i­ty of treat­ment for same sex re­la­tion­ships. That suc­ceed­ed at the High Court and Ap­peal Court and will go to the Privy Coun­cil.

He said there are al­so 23 oth­er laws where same sex re­la­tion­ships fig­ure, from the Ho­tels Act to Im­mi­gra­tion law. He said since it’s a hu­man rights is­sue he wasn’t “re­luc­tant” but at this time couldn’t ad­vise Gov­ern­ment to amend the law now be­cause im­plied re­peal could kick in with the 23 oth­er laws.

He said the courts are there to de­ter­mine what is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly fair and just.

“Let me make it clear: I’m not afraid to touch hu­man rights is­sues nor is the Prime Min­is­ter, we be­lieve in equal­i­ty but we feel laws are not de­signed on­ly by our­selves but al­so via con­sul­ta­tion and feed­back…. I set out a path that the Privy Coun­cil will un­doubt­ed­ly have to con­sid­er this (is­sue) and a gov­ern­ment will be guid­ed by this is­sue,” the AG added.