Despite requests to successive governments, nothing has been done to set up a national pilot project to determine the extent of domestic violence against women, according to the Cork Domestic Violence Project, which has announced the latest findings of an eight-year research programme.
The Cork Domestic Violence Project is a service of the Cork Marriage Counselling Centre, based at the Cork and Ross Diocesan Family Centre. At a news conference yesterday, the centre's director, Mr Colm O'Connor, said that submissions had been made to the past three governments outlining how a national pilot project on battered women could be used to develop a database and new information on the extent of the problem. However, no action had been taken on this.
Mr O'Connor continued: "The findings of our report illustrate compellingly that intervention programmes can make an enormous difference in the lives of abused women, violent men, and their children . . . The message for government departments and officials is that something can be done. Domestic violence cannot and must not be accepted as an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of family life. Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention and intervention are essential and these findings challenge government departments in a proactive manner to support the proposals of the Cork Domestic Violence Project regarding pilot project initiatives."
Since 1994, the project has seen 180 women and 157 men. It has shown that a "profound change" in both male and female lifestyles can be achieved once contact is made by either men or women.
For instance, asked if they felt safer after contacting the counselling service, 68 per cent of women said they felt much safer and 21 per cent said they felt safer. Only 11 per cent of the women who contacted the project said that things had remained the same.
Asked about their male partners' violence, some 67 per cent said that the partner had become non-violent; 18 per cent said he had become less violent; 12 per cent reported no change but only 3 per cent said that the partner had become more violent.
According to the survey, the effect of the programme on women was that 77 per cent felt there had been a lasting positive effect; 19 per cent felt the positive effect was temporary; 2 per cent said there had been no effect while a further 2 per cent said the effect had been negative.
Asked about male abuse, 51 per cent of women said this had been reduced because of the counselling, while only 7 per cent of respondents reported an increase in violence. The most interesting statistic was that 26 per cent of the women said that violence had been eliminated from their lives.
Mr O'Connor said that the support services offered in Cork showed that intervention worked. A similar pilot project should be organised nationally.
If women felt safer in their lives and if men who came to the project were confronting the reasons for their violence towards a spouse, then only good could come of this. The experience in Cork, he added, was that battered wives did not want their relationship to end - they wanted the violence to end.