Just like the war on drugs, the war on domestic violence will, for a long time, remain an ongoing war, neither being won nor lost. There will be intermittent periods of high and low of cases, possibly with some lull in between. If we go by statistics, the figures are alarming. The number of reports of domestic violence received by the Police has doubled in a decade, up from the 851 received in 2011 to 1,745 in 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic had led to more reports of domestic violence being filed during the two-year period of a practical lockdown that took its toll on our health. Despite all the measures adopted by Malta to fight this scourge, something, somewhere, somehow has been going wrong.
By July 2021, Malta renewed its Strategy on Gender-Based Violence and Domestic Violence intended to update the 2018-2020 one and aiming to improve the implementation of the legal regime, already considered as weak with a conspicuous lack of prosecution coupled with serious shortcomings in the preventive measures in place. The then Minister for Justice, Equality and Governance, Zammit Lewis, had aptly described domestic violence as a “plague on civilised society”. He insisted that it is the fruit of a certain kind of ignorance and stigma that still, unfortunately, lingers in society. The idea, therefore, was to emphasise awareness and continuous educational campaigns to get the message across.
That new strategy, designed in coordination with other interested units (in state-run social policy agencies and in the private sector), was expected to bring improvement through coordinated implementation. Media coverage was also expected to contribute to its success, through increased public opinion aware of the services provided, and through a potential deterrent effect on (potential) aggressors. The figures mentioned above dented all great expectations and are prompting us to send our policymakers back to the drawing board.
We might have a firm resolve in stemming violence against women, and we might have more than one entity, body or organization, both governmental and non-governmental, fighting this war on different fronts but the fact remains, even today, we still have a serious lack of training when it comes to sensitivity and awareness on domestic and other forms of violence against women, and the need is still felt for urgent improvement to reach compliance with the requirements of the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.
Our police are not yet trained up to standards on the dynamics of domestic violence, and our judges continue to show inadequate understanding of the change in paradigm in proving the various and subtle forms of domestic violence. We are still witnessing a lack of recording of patterns of abuse, barriers to reporting for particularly vulnerable categories of women are still around and insufficient and ineffective collection of evidence in cases of rape and domestic violence continue to compound the problem. The role and importance of referring perpetrators to domestic violence programmes are not yielding the expected results and victims of domestic violence wishing to separate are often still required to undergo mediation which, in most cases, increases antagonism rather than mediate.
Let us put some facts in their proper perspectives. All too often the question “Why did you continue in such an abusive relationship?” is posed to survivors, implying that they are to blame for the abuse. Instead, questions like “How did the person causing harm prevent their partner from leaving?” or “Why do perpetrators of abuse hurt the person they claim to love?” should be more appropriate. There are serious factors that weigh on the survivor’s decision to leave. Families may live with domestic abuse for a significant period before getting effective help.
There are many reasons why families live with domestic abuse for a significant period of time or return to their abuser after attempting to leave. It may not be apparent to the victim that a relationship is abusive. They may be afraid of the abuser and fear the consequences for others if they disclose the abuse, and victims still do not know where to turn for help notwithstanding frequent awareness campaigns.
The importance of survivors who leave and do not return to violent men being able to support themselves can never be stressed enough. Furthermore, we need to revisit how social assistance applications from survivors are dealt with, given the discretionary powers of social workers, the organization’s fixed categories and the survivors’ need for support. In many cases, victims do not have their own source of income due to financial abuse, or may not have access to alternate housing, cash or bank accounts.
Apart from the social barriers that are still prevalent in our society and which indirectly force victims to tolerate and accept abuses, some institutional responses, too, do not help at all. Clergy and secular counsellors are often trained to see only the goal of “saving” the marriage at all costs, rather than the goal of stopping the violence. Police officers do not consistently provide support to survivors. They may treat violence as a “domestic dispute,” instead of a crime where one person is attacking another person. Despite the issuing of a restraining order, there is little to prevent a released abusive partner from returning and repeating the assault. Malta’s lack of affordable safe housing and a limited number of emergency shelter beds for survivors of domestic violence may mean there is no place to go.
Domestic violence in our culture is, regrettably, still rife and has yet to be fully revealed. In all probability, it will never be totally eliminated and the best we can hope for is for the number of cases to go down. But, first, we must start by changing our culture.
Dr Mark Said is an advocate