Women’s Dept. exploring intervention program for batterers

When the sixteen days of activism activities wraps up next Wednesday, the task of finding ways to end domestic violence will continue in the background. One means by which the Women’s Department is exploring that issue is through an intervention program for batterers. In the country to discuss that possibility is the programme coordinator, director of Grenada’s program and a representative from UNIFEM. The batterers intervention program was first piloted in Grenada and is now in its seventh cycle, having successfully reached over a hundred men.

Shane Joseph, Program Coord., Grenada
“It’s about perpetrator accountability; that men begin to take ownership of their behaviour, begin to understand that violence is a choice and begin understand that they can solve their conflicts and their issues within their relationship by choosing alternative mechanisms apart from violence. The men initially are very resistant, but once they come into the program and they understand that it is about changing their behaviour and taking a desire to stop violence, most of them come on board by session four, five and are much more accommodating.”

Jacqueline Sealy-Burke, Program Director, Grenada
“We are going to be meeting with the potential facilitators for this program. One of the key ingredients of this program is that it is delivered by a male and female co-facilitators. That is essential. So tentatively, today we will be meeting with the potential facilitators. We also have to meet with the judiciary, the magistracy because unless there is total buy-in from the court system, it’s really not going to work because the programme is a court connected program, so most of the referrals come from the legal system, from the court system.”

Shane Joseph
“Yes, we are meeting with all the partner agencies, but in order for this program to be sustainable, there must be the buy-in and the support from the government to take ownership of this program, because at the end of the day, it is all about building, capacity building and sustainability.”

Icilda Humes, Director, Women’s Department
“A lot of work has been done with the victims of domestic violence in our country in terms of providing support, in terms of providing services, in terms of ensuring that they are able to access justice, but not enough work has been done with the perpetrators. We hear of incidences where women are able to leave abusive situations and they move on with their lives and their partners move on with their lives. But in some cases the perpetrators move on with their lives but they move one to another partner and they perpetrate the same violence on that individual so the cycle continues. So we are not really addressing the problem as it pertains to the perpetrators of domestic violence. so definitely it is some that we need in this country and it is something that we need very quickly.”

The team will also be meeting with the ministers of Human Development and Finance. They leave on Friday.