IRELAND NEEDS TO follow the US and UK’s lead and implement domestic homicide reviews to help prevent future fatal incidents, a domestic violence expert said today.
CEO of Women’s Aid Sarah Benson said countries such as the UK and the United States already have these protocols in place and said it would be prudent of our Department of Justice to implement the reviews.
The department has commissioned a study into these reviews and a report is due back shortly.
Benson said these reviews should be brought in, not to apportion blame to any one sector but to see where improvements could be made.
The CEO was speaking following the conviction of Daniel Murtagh for the murder of his former partner Nadine Lott.
Speaking to The Journal, Benson said the pandemic has led to a significant increase in the number of incidents of domestic violence across the country. In June of this year, Women’s Aid released its 2020 annual report which found a 43% increase in contacts with its services last year, compared to 2019.
“We’ve seen increases across the board. Gardaí also have had an increase in callouts and there has been an increase in prosecutions as well. The pandemic has put an incredible squeeze on people in abusive households,” she said.
Benson said that it was difficult to say if there had been an increase in the frequency of phone calls due to the publicity around the Nadine Lott murder case but said that representation of abuses, be they in court reports or in soap operas, are vital.
“I wouldn’t be able to say there was anything directly around the case but as a general comment, any time there is public focus on domestic violence or abuse – that public conversation, we definitely see responses.
“It’s about putting it out there, making people aware of it but we still are only going to see the tip of the iceberg. Those who reach out are always the minority. I say ‘please don’t feel like you have to be in some state of acute fear or high-risk situation to come to us’ – it [domestic violence] is so insidious, so creeping.”
Regarding the murder of Nadine Lott and what can be done in the future, Benson said that one of the main things for society, as a whole, is the need to be really vigilant and to challenge early on controlling behaviours.
Garda response
Gardaí implemented Operation Faoiseamh at the start of the pandemic to tackle the rise in domestic violence.
The pro-active operation saw gardaí trawl through the last 18 months of records and contact victims of domestic violence to check in on them and ask if they needed assistance.
Benson was quick to praise gardaí, especially now that there is a protective services unit in every garda division.
These units investigate domestic violence, sexual crimes, child exploitation and human trafficking to name a few.
Provisional figures for 2020 showed that gardaí received approximately 43,000 calls to respond to domestic abuse incidents – a 16% increase on 2019.
A further 4,300 domestic abuse court orders were notified to gardaí in 2020, while over 4,000 criminal charges were brought for alleged breaches of domestic abuse court orders.
Last month, the Policing Authority released its 15th report on the garda performance during the Covid crisis.
It found the response from organisations working with those suffering domestic abuse continues to “be overwhelmingly positive”.
The report cited one local organisation which described the positive change that had occurred in the relationship between their group and local gardaí in the last few years, accelerated by the experience of the pandemic.
“When asked to describe that change, reference was made to ‘the removal of barriers, increased compassion and understanding for the difficulty of the job that each of their organisations were trying to do and a sense that they and the Gardaí were a team in this together”, the report found.
Operation Faoiseamh will continue into the future, gardaí and support groups have said.
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