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AROUND 19,510 WOMEN and 19,440 children sought refuge from domestic violence in 2011 and 2012.
Anne* who has been a victim of domestic abuse for the last eight years said some of these women will suffer all of their lives.
“This is going on every single day of the week,” she said. “It’s a horrific life to go through.”
When Anne met her partner she thought “he seemed OK” but when she fell pregnant she started noticing a change in his character.
He became very controlling. I thought he might have been jealous because I was giving so much attention to the baby. But then he started looking for sex even though I had stitches after I had my child… He got verbally abusive and I knew the situation wasn’t right.
Four months after giving birth, a social worker advised Anne to seek refuge. Whilst there she received her first interim barring order against her ex-partner.
“I was advised by a judge to leave the refuge and return home because I had the safety order,” explains Anne. “Some men would be scared of an order, but that would not have phased him at all.”
He found out where Anne and their children were staying and stood outside the door waiting for her to come out. He also managed to pick up her children’s allowance and stalk her family, amongst a long list of other abusive behaviour.
“It takes a long time to get a barring order and it’s a lot of stress. At that stage he had also raped me, so I knew I couldn’t continue living in my home,” she says.
Following this Anne had no choice but to go back to a refuge where she lived on and off for four years.
“One of my children went to her first ever day of school from a refuge but I was able to give her as normal a life as possible living there,” she said.
Anne said that without the help of services like SAFE Ireland and Women’s Aid she would have been lost.
Refuges are so important. Sometimes there is very little room there but the staff are so supportive and they are there to help you. It helps as well to get your head in order.
Following numerous court appearances for barring orders, which Anne says her ex-partner never heeded, it got to the stage where he was stalking her every move. Although a judge warned her not to, she decided to move from the city to the country.
A judge told me to use my barring order. He said ‘don’t move because there would be people queuing up’ for my house in Dublin, but my home is only made of bricks and mortar. The judge couldn’t understand that I was being tortured every day.
Anne believes that sometimes judges and gardaí don’t have the training to understand what women are going through. “Sometimes gardaí believe that it is just a domestic,” she says.
To tackle the situation, Anne thinks there should be be more serious consequences for abusers. Although her ex-partner doesn’t know where she is living now, he has supervised access to their child, which Anne believes is totally wrong.
If a man breaks the safety order he should not be allowed to see the child because that safety order is there to protect the child as well. These men are getting free legal aid to harass women. They are costing the system a fortune.
Anne still fears for her life but she says she is “stronger now” and that her children are doing well in school.
For anyone who find themselves in a situation of domestic violence she has this advice:
Please get out. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. I used to have a lovely home and a nice job but safety is most important.
* Name and some details changed to protect the identity of the victim.
For support, see SAFE Ireland’s list of domestic violence services in your area or call Women’s Aid on 1800 341 900.
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We’ve known for decades that Mediterranean diet is very healthy especially in older age. Why do we keep researching things where we already know the answer?
@Gavin: It’s about finding out why and how.
@Gavin: a lot of things we “know” are urban legends or old wives tales.
Important that knowledge is verified and understood.
No mention of beef? What about the pooooooor hard done by farmers, surely we’re not suggesting that the government should subsidise the production of healthier, more sustainable foods like vegetables instead of continuing to spend millions on beef subsidies.
@: 1. Beef is healthy in moderation. 2. The Beef industry is a big Irish exporter, so basically a strong economic resource.
There is also research that states that a carnivore diet that’s very heavy on red meats like beef is very healthy and provides many benefits over a normal diet.
I personally wouldn’t go for this but I think that what diet works best depends very much so on the individual and we shouldn’t go writing off certain foods because it doesn’t fit our narrative
@milton friedman:
If it’s such a strong economic resource why does it rely on subsidies? The EU is phasing out beef subsidies for a reason. Why should we be subsidising the production of something with taxpayer money?
As for the “carnivore diet” being “healthy”, that’s fringe stuff that goes against the consensus. Saturated fat is linked to heart disease, the science on that is pretty solid. Most of our micronutrients come from fruit & veg rather than meat.
Not saying for a second we should ban beef or anything, I’m just challenging this ridiculous idea that subsidising beef is the duty of our governments. If we’re going to subsidise the production of food (which is a good thing to prevent reliance on other countries), we should be subsidising healthy, economic foods. Beef is expensive to produce, produces far more CO2 and methane than the alternatives, and is largely unhealthy at the levels people eat it. You’ll find far more people eating too much beef than too little.
@: I don’t disagree with anything you have said; in fact I basically wholly agree.
I was just outlining why beef receives subsidies, mainly for the second reason. I’m not sure the power it has now, surely diminished, but Ireland was making agreements with countries based on supplying beef (Libya and China for example) in the past, so it is seen as a benefit to subsidize beef production opposed to other produce.
@John Black: The carnivore diet reduces all gut bacteria immensely, both good and bad. So while it lowers inflammation from the bad gut bacteria that live off things like carbs,it also reduces your much needed good gut bacteria and likely causes bad long term affects.
@John Murphy:
It also lacks vitamin C, a deficiency of which, causes scurvy. It’s a dangerous diet peddled by crackpots.
I wouldn’t call it a crack pot diet because it does show beneficial effects on a short term. But I agree it’s very dangerous for the average person to try.
I’d stick with a low carb high fibre diet instead.
Living in a Mediterranean climate boosts chances of ‘healthy’ ageing among older people as well
@Fergus O’Connor: absolutely and you get brown and wrinkly and can rock about in the sun naked as the day god made you all those years ago..
Did someone forget to mention the cheap glass of wine, the warm climate ,proper health system and early pension might also have something to do with it ?
@Ken Bramley: D’accord. C’est la vie!
Eating Mediterranean fish in the Mediterranean will prolong your life even longer
@Shane Cormican: An underwater eating session in the Med could drown you!!!
A BIG factor is climate they are more healthy because outside more therefore more active and its warm so helps with arthritis, would get a lot of vitamin D
Well seeing as fish now consist or varying degrees of plastic you’d probably be better on a Mediterranean vegetarian diet with an omega 3 supplement.
Just living in a Mediterranean environment would prolong your life, the fish unfortunately like everywhere else are probably Toxic
Yea,the price of fish in this country.The spanish hoovering up all the fish and we live on an island and we cant afford to eat fish every day.
Knowing (and practising) this since I was 5 (months), I couldn’t agree more.
Also, it’s importat to enjoy food, and prepare yourself. That’ll keep you healthy too.
Load o’ bollocks
More Fiber, moderate meat, less processed fat like margarine or oil for 3 Euro, less sugar – it causes inflammation, that’s it. Of course most important is exercise.
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