A LIMERICK group campaigning to have incidents of domestic violence treated as criminal from the outset say more needs to be done to deal with perpetrators and protect victims.
The United and Strong group are about to launch a peer support service, having formed the lobby group after encountering each other in various services for victims and survivors of domestic abuse.
“From the very start, domestic violence is not treated the way other forms of violence are,” said Chairperson of the group, Maria Burns.
“If someone is outside their house and a man hits them, the gardai are called and they arrest the perpetrator of the assault. If a man hits his partner inside the home, in front of her children and the gardai are called, they will remove the woman and the children from the home and take them to a place of safety. Nothing happens to the perpetrator unless the victim makes a formal complaint”.
Ms Burns said the group is “not trying to highlight the fact that domestic abuse happens. People know that. What we want to see is abuse being treated as a criminal act from the outset”.
Senior legal sources confirmed to the Limerick Post that the difference between various acts and the laws governing domestic violence lies in the powers of arrest afforded to gardai.
“If gardai see an affray on the street, they have powers of arrest there and then. In an accusation of domestic abuse, the victim has to make a complaint before anyone is arrested”.
In practice, the United and Strong group says, the most usual course is to see a protection or barring order from the courts, and only if such an order is broken will the law act.
“There are guidelines for the gardai on dealing with domestic violence. The problem is that there seems to be no continuity and those guidelines are not being adhered to. I’ve live in other places and to be fair, the gardai in Limerick are very good – it’s much worse elsewhere,” said Ms Burns.
The group is composed of volunteers, most of whom have experienced abuse. As part of their mission statement they say they want to “seek justice and progress in order to improve the enforcement of the rights of individuals affected by domestic abuse”.
They are not funded and have received help from Mayor Michael Sheehan who has given them use of his office and the Absolute Hotel, which facilitates meetings.
“We don;t want funding. We want to be able to speak out and get things changed,” ms Burns told the Limerick Post
