REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE SEMINAR ON RAISING AWARENESS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE SEMINAR ON RAISING AWARENESS OF THE EFFECTS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as an fháilte chroíúl sin.
Good morning everyone and thank you for that warm and generous welcome. I am very grateful to have this opportunity to be with you here this morning for the opening of this important seminar on “Raising awareness of the effects of Domestic Violence on Children” organised by the Southside Addressing Violence Effectively group. I am particularly pleased to be here during these 16 Days of Action during which time many organisations are hosting events to highlight what is a scourge in our society, a cause of needless misery in so many homes.
The people in this room are probably more aware than most of the serious problem of domestic violence in our country. International experience tells us that one in five women come to know violence in an intimate relationship at some stage in their lives and we know too that men, women and children have all been at the receiving end of outrageous violence within the four walls of their own homes. The situation in Ireland is no different and no less acceptable or tolerable. The Gardai tell us that a staggering 10,000 incidents of domestic violence are reported every year. Those are the stories we know and they are grim enough God knows, but over and above them, suffering in silence, cowering night after night in dread, are many, many more victims whose misery goes unreported but not unchecked.
Earlier in the week I heard a news headline on the BBC which claimed that new laws in the United Kingdom were about to make domestic violence a crime. I found myself bristling with indignation at the sheer ignorance of a headline which carried the notion that somehow such violence lies outside the criminal law. It doesn’t and it hasn’t for many a long day. Certainly there was once, generations ago, a horrendous legal culture which allowed a man/master to apply reasonable chastisement to his servant, his animals, his children and his wife. Of those four only one remains today. So let there be no doubt that domestic violence is a callous, cruel and cowardly crime which is punishable by law. In fact it is one of the most insidious crimes imaginable for it doesn’t just take away your mobile phone, or your DVD player, it takes away things no insurance policy can replace - self-respect, dignity, self-confidence, hope, trust. It makes one human being a prisoner to another’s moods. It makes a home into a hell.
I have met the women and children who have had to abandon their homes and it is good to know that today we have refuges and support services that simply did not exist thirty years ago, when this problem like that of sexual abuse was a taboo subject, a hidden, dark, leprous side of everyday life. The message is getting out that you do not have to suffer in silence or put up with criminal abuse on your own. There are now people and places that exist only to help, to comfort to support and to guide the rebuilding of shattered lives. We owe a lot to those who make this work their business.
Domestic violence is a criminal violation of the person and the home. Personal relationships are deeply complex things and nowhere more so than in the family where bonds of love, affection, of emotional and financial dependency, blur the lines of sight where the vicious assailant is a husband, a partner, a so-called lover. Here in Ireland we value the family highly because we know that when it works well and for many people it does, society is made stronger, more resilient, more effective. But precisely because it is such a powerful social tool, in the wrong hands it can become an instrument of the most appalling individual and social dysfunction and we owe a duty of care to the vulnerable to protect their right to safety.
A lead item on the news from Belfast earlier this week was a dreadful story of a Protestant man married to a Catholic whose home has been the target of regular sectarian attacks now numbering over eighty. It is an outrageous story and rightly so, one that demands police action and community reaction. I know what it is to live with that kind of violence but there is a small comfort in knowing that the perpetrators are strangers, people who measure us only by labels, who hate us not because they know us but because they don’t know us at all.
How much worse is it when the perpetrator is someone who shares your table, sofa, bed, life, when there is no respite, when the objects are hurled inside the house not into the house? How much worse for a child when the perpetrator takes you to the pictures, picks you up from school, kisses you in sorrow, begs you to forgive when he sobers up? How does a child see the world through such twisted lens and such twisted logic? What price does such a child pay and what price do we all pay in the long run?
This seminar raises hugely important questions about the effects of domestic violence on children. We need to know the answers and sooner rather than later. Christmas time in happy homes is a magical time for children. We would wish such a time for every child and yet we know that in four out of every five instances of domestic violence, children are present. For a lot of children Christmas is their worst nightmare for in their house it is an excuse to drink to excess more, to lose control more, to make life even more miserable. Contrasted with the happy pictures beaming from the television, their lives seem to belong to another world - not ours and they are relying on you and I to help sort it out.
None of us has all the answers but when we work together, share experience, knowledge, know-how, we can create synergies that transcend obstacles, provide clarity and vision for the future. It is through events like this one here today - raising awareness of domestic violence and its effects on children - that change can be effected. And I know that this awareness-raising has been a primary aim of SAVE since its inception in 1997, earning much deserved recognition for what is still a fledgling organisation. SAVE’s policy document on domestic violence entitled ‘Our Collective Responsibility’ serves to remind us going forward of what is needed in the battle to end this blight. It is also a powerful challenge to us as a society to root out this cultural throwback which seeps its poison into each new generation, infecting young minds, hardening young hearts. Society owes you its thanks and I add my thanks to you for what you do to make this country and our world a better place, a kinder place, a safer place.
I wish you well in your deliberations today as I wish SAVE well in its important work in the years ahead.
Go n-éirí go geal libh. Go raibh maith agaibh.