Justice turns blind eye to violent partners

VIOLENT partners are escaping punishment while their victims are left to suffer in a society doing its best to ignore them.

Ireland has the lowest conviction rates for domestic violence in the European Union but the situation is disappearing from public record.

Statistics from Women’s Aid show that less than 7% of cases end with a sentence.

An estimated 300,000 people have experienced severe domestic abuse, less than a quarter have reported it.

Last year, 25,000 calls were made to the Women’s Aid helpline, 10,500 went unanswered.

Official garda figures show the problem is disappearing, yet services nationwide report to being swamped with increasingly complex cases.

There is a 10-week wait for hearings in Dublin’s family courts, yet their has been a 15% drop in all types of barring orders granted in the past nine years.

More than 2,000 battered women a year are getting turned away from overcrowded refuges, while 90% of abused women prefer to find sanctuary with family and friends.

All the while, Government depart- ments are casting aside the recommendations of the largest piece of research ever conducted on the Irish situation.

Sixteen months ago the National Crime Council (NCC) listed 35 points which needed to be addressed by departments and state agencies.

The vast majority relating to the depart- ments have been ignored.

Secure, long-term funding was supposed to be sanctioned for support services and refuges. Instead, their request for €7 million to lift a four-year-old spending cap was turned down.

The Department of Health was told to develop a policy on domestic violence and establish an internal working group. Today, it has no formal policy and does not accept any responsibility in the area.

One fifth of women with mental health problems suffered at the hands of violent partners. The HSE does not screen women to assess the impact it has had.

The Department of Justice was told to closely monitor national trends in domestic violence. It has not done so.

The NCC asked for the Probation Service to begin compiling reports for judges in barring order cases. In June, Justice Minister Michael McDowell killed off any hope of this by sending the service in the opposite direction.

The NCC and the 1997 Task Force on Violence Against Women have called on the gardaí to improve the scope of their statistics. For the past two years the gardaí have stopped collecting detailed figures on incidents of domestic violence.

Rachel Mullen, research and policy manager with Women’s Aid, says courageous women report abuse, “often to find themselves interacting with a system which neither protects them nor holds their perpetrators accountable.”

Research shows domestic violence is the greatest public health risk to young and middle- aged women above cancer and heart disease.

Fine Gael Social Affairs spokesman David Stanton is concerned the problems will be transferred to future generations if action is not taken now.

“I just get the sense that this is being brushed under the carpet and there is an awful lot of under reporting in this area. You have to wonder what impact this has on the children when a mother has to flee and bring her children to a refuge. The impact all that has on children must be absolutely huge.”