Murder the ultimate cost of home violence

MURDER was the ultimate price being paid by the victims of domestic violence, a seminar heard yesterday.

Unless the increasing problem of domestic violence was addressed, growing numbers of women could be killed, the Dun Laoghaire seminar was told.

The seminar, Southside Addressing Violence Effectively (SAVE), heard from Stephanie Holt of Trinity College Dublin that murder was the heavy price being paid by victims of domestic violence.

She discussed how, in the past three years, 50% of resolved murders involving women were committed by their intimate partners.

Brian Dunne, who developed a screening programme in the Mid-West region for women accessing mental health services, said there are still systematic difficulties in how domestic violence is treated by medical professionals.

He said: “The research we have carried out showed over 20% of women coming to mental health services have a history of, or are currently involved in, violent situations.

“This means that, very often, women are treated for the likes of depression but that was really only the symptom of a situation of domestic violence,” said Mr Dunne.

In the Mid-West, Mr Dunne works alongside trainers to improve the appreciation of women’s circumstances among professional staff, so the issue is not avoided by people uncomfortable with seeking the information.

It has produced a mental health screening questionnaire, now adopted by all services in the Mid-West. However, the Health Service Executive, at a national level, has yet to take a similar position.

He said: “We would hope, in time, it will be rolled out nationally, but there is no point reinventing the wheel when we have it all here already.

“What we have noticed is that things change at a very slow pace and you have to go along with that because there is a very slow mind-set.

“If you try to steamroll things you just get peoples’ backs up and nothing at all happens.”

The seminar was organised by SAVE who are campaigning for a refuge to be built in the Dun Laoghaire area, fearing the absence of emergency accommodation is putting women in unacceptable levels of danger.