REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE DROGHEDA WOMEN’S AND CHILDREN’S REFUGE CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW DROGHEDA WOMEN’S AND CHILDREN’S REFUGE CENTRE SATURDAY, 16TH APRIL, 2011
Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniu ar an ócáid mhór seo. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl daoibh as an gcuireadh agus as fáilte a bhí caoin, cneasta agus croíúil.
Thank you everyone for your warm welcome and thank you to Sr. Agnes, for the privilege of opening the Drogheda Women’s and Children’s Refuge Centre.
Most of us at some time or another have known that sickening fear of being vulnerable walking alone on a dark street or in an eerily quiet car park at night. Once we are safely inside our homes or cars, the fear evaporates because we know we are safe. But picture for a moment living in a home where the danger is inside our front door, where the sickening fear starts as soon as we close the door behind us and shut out the world because that home is shared with a bully, a tyrant, a violent abuser of alcohol or drugs, a person who regularly explodes in violent outbursts of anger that leave a partner or children or both damaged in body and in spirit, unable to enjoy life, unable to flourish humanly.
Domestic violence is no respecter of class, education, race or income. To the outside world, even to close family and friends the façade can seem just fine. Sometimes the signs are there but there is a reluctance to get involved for fear of making things worse or not knowing what to do. The bully counts on that - he counts on no-one caring so that he can continue his abuse uninterrupted. Who wants to believe that another human being can be so jealous and possessive as to check and challenge every movement of a partner to the point of obsessive harassment. Who wants to believe that human beings can treat each other routinely with unbearable physical and mental cruelty. But they do and if we want it to stop we have to care enough to intervene, effectively and firmly.
We know, from those who suffer the domestic abuse just how very difficult it can be to change or to escape from this toxic environment. There may be many reasons why an abused person feels they cannot simply pack up their things, take their children and get out of harm’s way. There are many reasons why things they have tried, to get the abuser to confront his demons, have not worked. There are many reasons why they feel unable to call the police, to report the violence, to get the barring order, to force the offender out of the home, to take control fully of their lives. That isolation and aloneness, that paralysing mess of fears, is the bully’s best friend. It allows the cycle to keep on keeping on, damaging lives that could be good and should be good, lives of adults, lives of children who will grow up to be adults with damaged lives. It allows patterns of unacceptable and outrageous criminal behaviour to become ingrained in family life and to go unpunished, unresolved.
It was St. Francis of Assisi who once said that ‘A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows’ and it is places like the Drogheda Women’s and Children’s Refuge Centre that allow that all important light into the darkly shadowed lives of victims of domestic abuse. This is where the bully meets his match - for this place knows the ways of the bully well and has a sophisticated and comprehensive strategy to stop him in his tracks. Here an abused family has friends, professional help, safe emergency accommodation and the chance of moving away from a life of fear into the light of independence and the normal, fulfilling lives that most of us take for granted. For many years now the Drogheda Women and Children’s Refuge Centre has been providing vital support and information to women and children caught up in the terrible world of fear and violence. This place knows only too well the impact that these current economic difficulties are having on the lives of already vulnerable families and how many need the reassuring presence of a steady and sure friend. This is community at its best - caring for its own, looking out for the wounded and the troubled, reaching out to them and staying with them through the tough times until they grow new coping skills, new confidence and fresh strength with which to face the future.
I thank everyone involved in the centre for taking up this very special mission and vocation of care for victims of domestic abuse. I thank and congratulate the victims of domestic abuse who refuse to accept family violence as a way of life and who do what it takes to break the vicious circle of destructive relationships. I thank them for reaching out to the help that is available and taking it for as long as they need it to restart their lives on new terms. You are a warning to the bullies that there is always a day of reckoning. You are an inspiration to those still paralysed by fear and you are living proof that there is always time to begin again and to create a life renewed by hope and free from fear. I hope in this place many families will be helped successfully to begin again - or in the lovely words of Brendan Kennelly:
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.
I hope those who waste their lives abusing others will themselves come to see the beauty of life that they are blind to and take the opportunity that is offered by having breath in your body, to begin again. May those they hurt be healed here and in the healing be strong rather than scarred. May this place be a place of comfort, security, love and optimism - the launch pad to better times, better lives.
Go raibh mile maith agaibh go léir.