Domestic violence

Valene Lynch’s situation came about because of poverty and a lack of family support. These are not factors which affect only women, since there are far more homeless men than women. But homeless women are far more vulnerable, and Ms Lynch ended up with the added burden of an infant to take care of. Hers is a case which the State should have taken care of long before it reached the media. Indeed, even after Valene’s plight became public, it was private citizens who provided help, although URP workers have been involved in clearing the land for her new home. But the Ministry of Social Affairs, with typical bureaucratic sloth, is yet to make its presence known.

The State also failed in the case of Sherida Chickoree, although in this matter State involvement may not have made a difference. Sherida had family support, but chose not to take it. After she and her husband separated, she continued to live on her own, although she was sensible enough to send her two children to live with their grandparents after her husband attacked her. Sherida ostensibly wanted to reclaim her independence. But this was a situation where discretion, even if just for a few months, might have been the better part of valour.

However, having made her decision, Sherida did do the correct thing and report the threats and attacks to the police. But it appears that the officers did not take the matter seriously enough. She had also applied for a restraining order, but had not got it by the time of her murder. Perhaps if she had, and if the police had confronted Sherida’s husband, he might have been deflected from his murderous course.

But perhaps not. Men who become obsessed with women in this way are often not amenable to either reason or threat. The fact that Sherida’s husband killed himself after murdering her shows that he had reached this stage. So there is only so much police officers can do. But such incidents can be reduced if women know where they can turn to for help — what numbers to call, how to get information about halfway houses, and so on.

This is an area where cultural factors are also important. Ours is a society which, in many ways, still maintains unsuitably traditional attitudes to women’s roles. There are influential quarters which still send signals that women are inferior to men, and can even be regarded as possessions. Such an attitude facilitates domestic violence, which can escalate all too easily to murder. It is therefore important for those in authority to take deliberate action which shows that ours is a society where women have equal status to men.

An important initiative in this regard is the Draft Gender Policy, which now appears to be in no-man’s land. One month ago, we called on Gender Affairs Minister Joan Yuille-Williams to clarify what is happening with the policy — a call which has been completely ignored. Perhaps, though, Valene Lynch and the late Sherida Chickoree will rouse that Ministry from its apparent slumber.