Domestic abuse

Ms Narine, 38, having spent three years in jail awaiting trial, was found to be suffering from Battered Wife Syndrome. During her marriage, her husband continually threatened to kill her. He once hit her in the stomach when she was pregnant and on another occasion broke her arm while she was trying to defend one of her ten children against his drunken rage. So even the State’s attorneys did not object to a non-custodial sentence, agreeing that sending Ms Narine to jail would serve no constructive purpose.

But, as Justice Anthony Carmona said when he freed Ms Narine, violent retaliation is not a solution to problems. “The avenue to empowerment is not through murdering your husband. There are other social means and services to help people who suffer from domestic violence,” the judge noted.

Unfortunately, many of the women who are most in need of such services are not aware that the avenues exist.

The various shelters for battered women no doubt do their best to make women aware of their services, but the message probably does not reach those on the lower rungs of society. Females of all classes and types even professional women who should know where to get help, are subject to abuse from men. Women from working class and traditional backgrounds, who are more likely to experience such abuse, suffer more since they seldom know where to get help.

When a woman is not economically independent, a man will be tempted to use that to exert control over her. If she is the least bit defiant — and, often, even if she is not — such attempts escalate into emotional and physical abuse. Women who adhere to traditional values are also more likely to be abused, not least because their abusers are often confident that the woman will quietly accept whatever treatment is meted out to her.

If middle-class women are less likely, as a group, to face such situations, it is only because they have more options. But wife beating and abuse is as rampant among the middle class and upper class and ironically this is so even as women achieve greater financial independence.

It is those women who do not have alternatives who, being forced by circumstance to remain with their abusers, may reach a state where they find murder an easier alternative than walking out. And, because these women lack the economic, social, and personal resources to deal with abuse, the State has a responsibility to provide options. In essence, this means ensuring that shelters are adequately funded, as well as the promotion of outreach programmes so women, who may not even be able to read newspapers, will know where they and their children can go if they are being abused.

In the final analysis, however, reducing domestic violence is essentially a cultural challenge. The provision of shelters, laws, and information are all part of the process of creating a mindset where the average person perceives the emotional and physical abuse of women (and men) to be inherently wrong. Such violence can never be eliminated, human nature being what it is. But, by making it socially unacceptable and by providing support services, murder as a method of settling domestic conflict can surely be significantly reduced. The call by well known domestic abuse activist Diana Mahabir-Wyatt for strong men to stand up and make their voices heard in this matter should be heeded.