Charity campaign targets domestic abuse

A FIVE-YEAR plan to tackle domestic violence and limit its impact on children will be launched this week by a new Irish charity.

Aoibhneas Foundation chief executive, Dr Mimi M Kim, said the organisation will focus on prevention, intervention and post-crisis development of victims.

“It is intended that programmes will be developed around these three pillars, adapted to the three major client groups, victims, perpetrators and the public,” she said.

Approximately one-in-five Irish women are victims of domestic violence.

Up to 18% of all women have reported suffering physical attacks from their partners; 59% of women have reported knowing a woman who had experienced male violence in the home, and 36% of women respondents in a survey of doctors’ surgeries in north-east Dublin reported suffering violence in the home.

However, the foundation said these figures were the tip of the iceberg because of the huge level of under-reporting of domestic violence.

Foundation chairperson Terri Morrisey said their belief was that domestic violence was a human rights issue disproportionately effecting women and children.

“Domestic violence effects between 20% and 50% of women at some stage in life in most populations surveyed globally,” she said.

Ms Morrisey described violence against women as not only a major public health and community welfare issue, but also an important corporate and social issue.

The not-for-profit organisation will be formally launched at a fund-raising Masque Ball in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham on Friday, November 14.

For further information log onto www.aoibhneas.org or telephone [phone].