Pavi­t­ra Ramharack

Many of us know some­one who may be a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence does not on­ly mean the phys­i­cal act of abuse, but al­so in­cludes abuse such as sex­u­al, emo­tion­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal and fi­nan­cial. We have seen friends, cowork­ers, rel­a­tives, and even neigh­bours suf­fer silent­ly, and some of us may have of­fered help, while oth­ers be­lieved it was more pru­dent not to in­ter­fere in the pri­vate lives of oth­ers.

Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is one of those scourges that nev­er go away. No mat­ter how much so­ci­ety has evolved or how mod­ernised we be­lieve we have be­come, it still has a grip on us and lurks in the shad­ows as a top­ic thick­ly coat­ed with shame, scan­dal and em­bar­rass­ment.

In T&T, we recog­nised the need to pro­tect do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims and in 1999, as­sent­ed to the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act, and in 2020, there were amend­ments to the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act. The amend­ments sought to in­tro­duce new cat­e­gories of per­sons who could ap­ply for pro­tec­tion and ex­pand­ed on the pro­tec­tions of­fered.

Se­cur­ing an or­der un­der the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act or, as we com­mon­ly say, a pro­tec­tion or­der, is a fair­ly sim­ple pro­ce­dure. An ap­pli­ca­tion is made to the Mag­is­trates’ Court. De­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the is­sues, an in­ter­im or­der can be made of­fer­ing pro­tec­tion be­fore a re­spon­dent even ap­pears be­fore the court. While it can some­times be im­por­tant to have le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion at these hear­ings, it is not nec­es­sary and per­sons with fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties can rep­re­sent them­selves at the hear­ings for their ap­pli­ca­tion.

A pro­tec­tion or­der can be grant­ed for as long as three years and would usu­al­ly di­rect the re­spon­dent to cease com­mu­ni­ca­tion with ap­pli­cants, to re­main a re­quired dis­tance away from ap­pli­cants, to re­move them­selves from a shared home and cease any con­duct which can be con­sid­ered as do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

While we have the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion in place, in­ci­dents of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence con­tin­ue to plague our so­ci­ety, with a per­cent­age be­ing re­port­ed, but clear­ly, a per­cent­age which goes un­re­port­ed. Last week, there was an in­ci­dent where a per­son who was sus­pect­ed of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence was shot dead by po­lice. It was re­port­ed that po­lice re­spond­ed to a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence call and up­on, the sus­pect pro­ceed­ed to re­peat­ed­ly stab one of the re­spond­ing of­fi­cers and was shot and killed. The ar­ti­cle fur­ther stat­ed that the sus­pect was al­leged­ly abus­ing two el­der­ly ladies who had suf­fered from years of abuse.

It was al­so re­port­ed dur­ing last week that a woman was shot and killed by her hus­band dur­ing a do­mes­tic dis­pute and the hus­band ini­tial­ly at­tempt­ed to con­tend the wife was killed by an in­trud­er.

In both sce­nar­ios, it may be fair to guess that the re­port­ed in­ci­dents were not the first in­ci­dents of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Yet, the vic­tims were still in the homes with the al­leged abusers. While read­ing such ar­ti­cles, it is of­ten very easy for the read­ers to opine that the vic­tims should have left, sought help from the court, and made a re­port to the po­lice and so on. It is usu­al­ly very sim­ple to of­fer such opin­ions, but some­times dif­fi­cult for the vic­tims to act on any of them.

The Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act of­fers pro­tec­tion but can­not of­fer all the pro­tec­tion re­quired by a vic­tim. Not all vic­tims have ac­cess to shel­ter, mon­ey, em­ploy­ment or prop­er op­por­tu­ni­ties that al­low them to eas­i­ly walk away from their abusers. Many vic­tims are de­pen­dent on their abuser for all their fi­nan­cial needs, not just for them­selves but al­so for their chil­dren. There are many who are un­em­ployed and have no easy ac­cess to fi­nances that would al­low them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to flee and prop­er­ly take care of them­selves and their chil­dren. Worse yet, many vic­tims have been forced to os­tracise their friends and rel­a­tives, so that they have no one to de­pend on or seek as­sis­tance from.

Our leg­is­la­tion al­lows a le­gal frame­work to pro­tect vic­tims, but we have not suc­cess­ful­ly been able to gen­er­ate the as­sis­tance vic­tims need to walk away. While there are sev­er­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions that have done an ex­cel­lent job of cre­at­ing shel­ters of­fer­ing med­ical, le­gal and hous­ing as­sis­tance to women and their chil­dren, these shel­ters of­fer lim­it­ed spaces and are not lo­cat­ed in all com­mu­ni­ties or ar­eas where their re­sources are need­ed. I can­not keep check of the num­ber of di­vorces I have done where women com­plained about how dif­fi­cult it was to walk away be­cause there is lit­tle sup­port avail­able to women who are vic­tims. Sad­ly, many vic­tims chose to live in bad sit­u­a­tions due to a sense of help­less­ness or their own hard­ships.

It is be­com­ing more and more nec­es­sary to cre­ate safe havens for vic­tims. Shel­ters should be eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to those who need a place to es­cape to while they re­con­sid­er their op­tions and be­gin to re­gain their in­de­pen­dence and abil­i­ty to stand on their own. We now of­fer var­i­ous so­cial ser­vices, in­clud­ing food cards, so­cial ser­vice pay­ments, self-help, and oth­er such av­enues to as­sist per­sons who are in need. How­ev­er, we need to find a more ef­fec­tive way to as­sist vic­tims in es­cap­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com