Report recommends gender-sensitive training for judges in family law cases

The review also says significant reform of the Family Court will be needed to meet our obligations under the convention and recommends that the State "funds and provides compulsory and systematic gender-sensitive training to members of the judiciary and Court experts to identify signs of abuse in judging matters of custody and visitation rights." File photo: Joe Raedle

Judges should be made to take part in gender-sensitive training to ensure the court system identifies domestic, sexual, and other abuse when adjudicating on custody and visitation cases, a new report has found.

The National Observatory on Violence Against Women has also recommended that the ethos clause be removed from the rules for primary schools, to allow for the rollout of a comprehensive, continuous, age-appropriate sex education programme to pupils.

The report published today scrutinises the Government’s plan to tackle domestic, sexual, and gender-based violence and highlights the need for an extra 181 refuge beds.

The Observatory report commends the Government’s Zero Tolerance Strategy on domestic and sexual violence published earlier this year, but says implementation will be key.

It particularly highlights the stipulations in the Convention that a "gold standard" of data collection by all national agencies — including the gardaí, the court service, sexual assault treatment units, and Tusla — to ensure victims do not fall through the cracks. 

The report says this data must be broken up by age, gender, ethnicity, and migration status of both victim-survivors and perpetrators as well as by relationship between victim-survivors and perpetrators in line with the Istanbul Convention’s standards.

The review also says significant reform of the Family Court will be needed to meet our obligations under the convention and recommends that the State "funds and provides compulsory and systematic gender-sensitive training to members of the judiciary and Court experts to identify signs of abuse in judging matters of custody and visitation rights."

Chair of the Observatory, Orla O’Connor, said: "Because of the diversity of women affected by gender-based violence (GBV), the State must use a diversity of tools, including measures targeted at specific communities, to effectively eliminate such violence."

Education

On education and awareness raising, the report urges the State to develop a comprehensive, continuous, age-appropriate sex education programme as part of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment review of the national education curriculum, including topics such as intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual exploitation, pornography, and cyberviolence.

"The State must remove the ethos clause from the Rules for National Schools and have full control over the curriculum," the document adds.

Refuges

The report recommends that a minimum of 500 refuge beds are provided across the country. Currently, there are just 319 refuge beds.

Eliona Gjecaj, disability advocate and gender-based violence researcher, said: “Disabled women are more likely to be subjected to gender-based violence than non-disabled peers, and women with intellectual disabilities are most at risk. Government must take an intersectional approach to this, including through obvious steps like making refuge spaces accessible to those with disabilities. "

The Observatory, established in 2002, is an independent network of 22 organisations that come together to monitor progress on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence (DSGBV).