Problem in Paradise- VI must face reality of Domestic Violence- Rev. Malone
Mrs Malone was speaking on October 12, 2012 at the opening ceremony of the Domestic Violence Awareness Conference hosted by Agape Total Life Centre in collaboration with the Office of Gender Affairs.
The reverend said she was appalled to see the statistics on Domestic Iiolence in the Virgin Islands and revealed that in 2009 there were 69 reported cases of domestic violence, 8 of those involved assault occasioning actual bodily harm and 46 were common assault; in 2010 there were 84 reported cases, 15 were assault occasioning actually bodily harm and 51 common assault; in 2011 the number climbed to 87 with 23 cases of assault occasioning actual bodily harm while 39 were regarded as common assault.
Up to the end of August 2012, there were 124 reported cases of Domestic Violence with 25 classified as assault occasioning actually bodily harm, 63 common assaults and one murder.
Reverend Malone noted that experts have a saying you often have to double the figure to get at the real figure...“We have a problem in paradise.”
On the question what the community was going to do about the problem, Mrs. Malone said the first thing is to admit that there is a problem. “Do we wait on another speaker to come or do we ourselves do something about it. I think one of the first things we have to do is to stop pretending and to take our heads out of the sand to recognise that there is domestic violence in this part of paradise. Because you can’t do anything about it until you admit that it exists.”
Noting that she was reading a US report on domestic violence in which the write stated that if domestic violence was a communicable disease, the government would have to declare it an epidemic, Mrs Malone said given the size of the VI community, “I think we ourselves have started to reach epidemic stage.”
“We can no longer pretend that this is not our reality. I think the only way we can deal with it is, as I said, to acknowledge it and to do things like this, to sensitise ourselves and our congregation and seek to educate ourselves and seek to support those agencies that are doing something about it. We are not trained, by and large, in the churches to really make a response, we can do an initial response but we need people who are trained at the specialist level and we need to do our bit to support those people.”
She also said there was need to work hand in hand with the Family Support Network, Office of Gender Affairs and Social Development Department to “deal with what we are seeing. We need to educate our children, we need to educate both our young men and women and we need to educate ourselves”.
She said the initiative to have a Domestic Violence Awareness Conference was a good first but hopes it will not be the last step but that persons would be proactive in an effort to address the serious issue in the community.
6 Responses to “Problem in Paradise- VI must face reality of Domestic Violence- Rev. Malone”
On a lighter note, somebody should have given the Reverand a stool to stand on. She barely was visible behind the pulpit.