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Guyana battles domestic violence

By Elan Era-John, Freelance Writer

The article below is a special production distributed through Panoscope, a series of Panos Caribbean. This article is a part of the UNIFEM Gender Equality project being implemented by Panos Caribbean. It is made freely available to your media and we encourage publishing and redistribution, giving credit to Panos Caribbean and UNIFEM. We appreciate feedback.

Kingston, 1 December 2006 (Panos) “A 25-year-old mother of four was stabbed to death, allegedly by her reputed husband on Thursday night at Kuru Kururu on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway, feet away from her relatives’ home to where she had moved in order to escape domestic abuse.” Stabroek News, September 4, 2004.

“Police in Georgetown yesterday chased and caught the man wanted in connection with the murder of a Golden Grove mother in August this year and the wounding of her daughter during a domestic squabble.” Stabroek News, December 29, 2005

“Wife abuser gets two weeks jail”

“Magistrate Geeta Chandan on Wednesday sentenced a man to two weeks imprisonment when he appeared before her to answer to the charge of assault causing actual bodily harm.” Stabroek News, November 11th 2006

And so the story goes…

Though Guyana passed legislation on Domestic Violence ten years ago, spousal abuse continues unabated and everyday the media report on cases of domestic abuse, the worse of which sometimes end in death for the victims.

And there is the widely held perception that the Domestic Violence Act passed in 1996 has had little effect. Most stakeholders, among them the Government ministry responsible for women’s affairs, are of the view that the Act isn’t effective and that it needs to be strengthened.

Minister of Human Services in the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security Priya Manickchand said that Guyana legislation on Domestic Violence, though one of the most comprehensive in the region, remains largely untapped.

“We have every reason to be proud of our Domestic Violence Act, but we could be prouder of it still if we make the Act effective as the lawmakers had intended it to be. But this cannot be done by my Ministry alone…it has to be a collaborative effort by this Ministry, the Ministry of Legal Affairs, the Judiciary, the Police and other organizations,” she said.

“We are not calling for convictions in the Courts, we are just asking that each case be [treated expeditiously],” she said, adding that her Ministry was hoping to develop a document which sets out timelines and proper procedure for filing matters in the Courts.

Hospital to report Domestic violence

The Minister said too that it is her intention to mandate that institutions such as hospitals report cases of domestic violence when they come in for medical treatment.

“Attitudes towards Domestic Violence have to change in this country and this is seen in how the Courts address the issue,” the Minister said while explaining that in some cases the Courts refuse to evict an alleged abuser for an incident of slapping. She said that the Courts should apply the law even in these instances.

The Guyana Police Force said recently that it was scaling up its training in the area of domestic violence through continuous training programme, but the Force acknowledged that there is still much ground to be covered.

Speaking at a public forum some months ago, former Director of Public Prosecutions Roxanne George asked the Police Force to consider how women are treated when they visit the Police station to lodge complaints, how much time they spend waiting for attention or a response and what facilities are at the stations that make it conducive to a victim giving a statement.

Help and Shelter, one of the foremost organizations offering help to abused women, said that though the Act seeks to protect victims of domestic abuse, it offers little punishment to perpetrators.

According to Margaret Kertzious, Coordinator of Help and Shelter, the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act is slow.

She said that to help stem the problem, efforts at sensitizing women to the issues need a lot of public education and outreach to younger girls and women. “The public has been sensitized through public education and advocacy with stakeholders and civil society in relation to training Police officers, members of the community and other target groups about the Domestic Violence Act,” she said. “Women should know their rights; be able to recognize abuse; to recognize a potential perpetrator; know the characteristics of an abuser and be able to take timely action dealing with an abusive situation.”

She said that in general there has been a positive response in Police handling of cases due to the training but there are still a number of cases that are inappropriately handled. She said that even though Police officers have been trained, there is still not many functioning Domestic Violence Units. Retrieving information from the Guyana Police Force was difficult even though a letter was written to the Commissioner of Police requesting such information.

Kertzious said that in some cases action is taken but in most cases the Police treat the issue “like they don’t care.”

Turning to the work of her organization, Kertzious said that Help and Shelter’s facilities give battered women shelter and support. “Support systems are important for the recovering abused woman. There is need for support from the Government, from friends and family and from organizations,” she said.

At another women’s organization, Red Thread, Joy Marcus said that people in Guyana don’t know enough of the Act. She also believes that the Act hasn’t been working to the fullest.

“We have been educating women on various aspects of the Act…we’ve been training women on the use of the Act and the Police have been benefiting also,” she said.

Marcus said that it is hoped that the Police officers trained would become part of the Domestic Violence Units at the Police stations.

According to Marcus, women feel compelled to remain in abusive relationships because of fear of the men from threats given, their economic circumstances, shame, religious or cultural beliefs, or they may believe that they have nowhere to turn.

She was optimistic that this might change if the police get to introduce training at the entry level in dealing with Domestic Violence.

Marcus said that to guard against the possibility of Police not treating a case with the seriousness it deserves, Red Thread would call the Police station and tell the officers in charge that they are sending someone with a complaint. She said that when this is done, the Police would tend to treat the matter professionally.

But she said they rarely got feedback from the women after they went to the police.

Another concern that Marcus has is the security of women living in interior locations. She said that it is hard to ensure that when a man is ordered to stay away from a woman’s home, he does. Because of the remoteness of Guyana’s interior, a magistrate has to travel great distances to hear cases and may not hold Court sessions for weeks.

With this system, she said that a woman may have to wait for weeks in order to get a protection order from a magistrate. This she said had to be urgently addressed if women are to be better protected.

Section 42 of the Act states that a whenever Police officer intervenes in a case of domestic violence he shall as soon as possible take all possible measures within his power to prevent the victim of domestic violence from being abused again. That officer is mandated through the Act to ensure victim gets medical treatment.

Where the victim expresses concerns for her safety, the Police officer has to assist that victim to getting to a place of safety. The Act states that a Police officer is also obligated, if requested, to accompany the victim to get her belongings from the home.

But Manickchand said: “We don’t see them (the Police) doing what the Act states.” She said that sometimes the abused women have to get legal officers from the Legal Aid Clinic to accompany them to pick their stuff. “Legal Aid does not have the capacity to deal with such responsibility and their officers could be open to abuse as well,” Manickchand said.

In addition to this, she charges that the Police are still not adequately filing reports and keeping proper records of cases. She said that because of this, Police cases come up short in the Courts.

Section 20 of the Act states: “The clerk shall fix a date for the hearing of an application for a protection order which date shall be no more than seven days after the date on which the application is filed.” But the Minister said that in some cases, the cases is postponed for several weeks and in the meantime, the woman in whose name the application is made is forced to endure more abuse until her case comes up.

She said that though there has been much training on Domestic Violence in Guyana, “I haven’t seen the proportional response to the treatment of instances of abuse.” The Minister said that there is a section of the current legislation allowing the Minister to make regulation to fully implement the Act and this she intends to do soon.

“We are in the process of determining what regulations are needed so we can make them…at the moment we are in consultation with the various stakeholders,” she said.

The Minister said that Guyana has to do more in its public campaign against Domestic Violence and the systems in place have to be made easier and more accessible to the victims. In this way, women who want to break the cycle and get out of violent domestic situations can do so and feel as though the system isn’t failing them.

Guyana’s Domestic Violence Act has its genesis in a draft bill that the Women’s Right’s Campaign prepared and presented to the then Minister of Labour Henry Jeffrey. On January 10, 1995, Guyana became a party to the Inter-American Convention on Violence Against Women by pledging to institute laws on domestic violence.

Figures from Help and Shelter show that from 1998 to 2005, the incidence of domestic violence has been fairly constant, but many people believe that the problem is worse and they base their belief on numerous newspaper reports.

1998 – 351 of 485 were of domestic violence .

1999 – 916 of 1,472 were of domestic violence.

2000 – 669 of 1,052 were of domestic violence.

2001 – 416 of 690 were domestic.

2002 – 313 of 489 were domestic.

2003 – 304 of 460 were domestic.

2004 - 250 of 444 were domestic.

2005 – 246 of 416 were domestic.

A staff member of Help and Shelter said that the figures for the early years have been low because at that time not many people knew of the services that the organization. He said that the differences in the numbers in the later years may be because more people are accessing the organization’s services and are addressing their problems earlier.