Senator Bacik calls for more effective responses to Domestic Violence

BACIK CALLS FOR MORE EFFECTIVE RESPONSES TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

On the subject of domestic violence, Senator Ivana Bacik is today calling for more effective responses in both the criminal law and in law enforcement mechanisms.

On the day that a special Seanad debate has been scheduled on the subject of domestic violence, Senator Bacik said: "A core problem with the use of the criminal law to deal with domestic abuse is that such abuse is typically carried out as part of a pattern of behaviour. Few acts of domestic violence are isolated events.

"Yet the criminal law is generally designed to deal with isolated or once-off incidents, and to attribute liability for those isolated events to particular offenders. It can be difficult to apply it in the context of an ongoing abusive relationship. The statistics kept by the Gardai, for example, do not identify repeat call-outs, so that it is impossible to know how many recorded incidents of domestic violence involve the same individuals. Neither is it possible to ascertain the number of mutually abusive relationships."

Warning about the problems with statistics on domestic violence, Senator Bacik said: "A further problem lies in the statistics themselves. It is difficult to ascertain how effective or otherwise the criminal law is, given the well-established evidence that most domestic violence goes unreported. The National Crime Council survey found that only a minority of victims (one in five) had reported the abuse to the Gardai – and this must be a matter of real concern to us all."

ENDS.