Tragedies show why we can silence women’s voices no longer
THE past couple of weeks have been horrendous for women and children in Ireland. In just 14 days, there have been media reports of court cases and violent incidents in which, at the very least, nine women and children have been the direct victims of horrific domestic and sexual violence. Women have been beaten, assaulted, raped, scalded and found dead in violent circumstances. Children were strangled, traumatised, left without their mother, and sexually abused.
One of the difficulties with a 24-hour media cycle is that it moves so quickly. Stories are presented as isolated incidences. There is little time to join the dots, to ask the questions, not about the one case, but about the prevalence of relentless violence that is happening to women and children in homes and communities throughout the country.
We know that one in three women in Ireland experiences some form of abuse in their lives. We also know that 79pc of women who experience violence do not report it. This means that for every one reported incident of violence and abuse, there are four that go unreported. While the last two weeks has seen a remarkably high number of reported high-profile cases, the reality is that this is only the tip of the iceberg in everyday, violent Ireland.
Poignantly, on the day that the violent death of one young woman dominated the front pages and the airwaves, we at Safe Ireland were opening our international Safe World Summit. This was the largest event on gender inequality and gender-based violence to take place in Europe this year. We had gathered more than 35 world-renowned leaders and 500 delegates in Dublin to explore the solutions needed to address the enormous problem of violence against women globally, and clearly, in Ireland.
Our speakers offered nine key solutions particularly relevant to Ireland: one for each of the nine lives that we know about that have been affected directly by the violence reported over the past two weeks.
First and foremost, we have to believe women who report violence. We heard from the activist Eileen Flynn that violence in her Traveller community is dangerously disregarded and minimised because it’s “part of their culture”. Women, regardless of community or background, cannot be ignored or regarded as a nuisance because of stereotyping and social biases.
We desperately need this issue to be a political priority, starting with a new minister for gender-based violence. Just four
Young women are still being groped, harassed, sexually assaulted and violated on a night out
out of the 218 members of our Oireachtas attended our summit; they were all women. In contrast, we heard from Marsha Scott, of Women’s Aid Scotland, about the transformative difference that dedicated political leadership, across genders, has made in her country.
Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone told us that the new Domestic Violence Act 2018 will make Ireland a safer country. It will indeed. It’s a ground-breaking act that recognises the patterns of control at the heart of violence. But the act must be commenced quickly and then resourced adequately if it is to realise its potential.
There was also consensus from a number of trauma specialists that Ireland urgently needs a resourced national trauma recovery programme to support survivors and those around them to heal, recover and thrive.
We have to take a look at what’s happening in our courts. Kathleen Chada, who lost her boys Eoghan and Ruairi when they were murdered by their father in July 2013, was unequivocal that our courts more often give preference to the needs of the perpetrator over the rights of the victim.
We have a long history of silencing women’s voices and it has to stop. Silence, we heard, is the universal condition of oppression, maintained by patriarchal establishment.
Survivor Suzanne Connolly spoke about her 34-year-long battle with a patriarchal hierarchy to see her abuser, her adoptive father, sentenced for sexual abuse.
There was a resounding call to work with media to help improve reporting so that it doesn’t revictimise or retraumatise survivors or continue to perpetuate myths and biases. Brothers Luke and Ryan Hart told the summit that media reports in the wake of the murder of their mother and sister by their father only added to their unimaginable trauma.
We depressingly heard from young women that they are still being groped, felt up, harassed, sexually assaulted and violated on a night out. We must make understanding of consent a loud, ongoing, national narrative – not just a topic that is covered in a 30-minute workshop or school module, and then promptly forgotten amidst the machoistic shout for last orders.
Finally, if there is one key thing that we can all do to help eradicate gender-based violence, it’s talk about it – not stifle it or cover it up with eulogies about what a great father or dedicated member of the GAA or golf club a perpetrator might be. For far too long in Ireland we have been having too small a conversation about too big a problem. The events of the past two weeks surely tell us this, loud and clear.