Number of domestic violence cases on the decline?

icilda humes

The number of reported cases of domestic violence for 2009 has been released in an annual report issued by the Ministry of Health.  While the figures reflect a decrease in reported cases, they are inconclusive since there may be incidents that go unreported.  That leads to a general misconception that things are looking brighter says the Director of the Women’s Department but such may not be the case.

Icilda Humes, Director, Women’s Department

“The National Gender Based Violence Surveillance is compiled on a quarterly basis by the Ministry of Health Epidemiology Unit and they disseminate this information.  The statistics for 2008 showed that there was one thousand, three hundred and fifty six cases of gender-based violence of which domestic violence is one form of gender-based violence but these statistics also include cases of child abuse.  The statistics for 2009 show that there were one thousand, six hundred and sixty nine cases of gender-based violence.  If you subtract maybe about a hundred and sixty-nine cases of child abuse from that then you’re left with the number of reported cases of domestic violence for both men and women.  Over the years, or at least for the past four years, we’ve seen that the ratio of five to one is generally maintained in terms of women to men reporting domestic violence.  A lot of times people misinterpret these statistics and you will say that based on the report from 2008 in comparison to the report from 2009 you will see that the reported cases have actually gone down.  And so some people will say well that means that domestic violence has gotten better; the situation is better.  If you look at the reported cases for 2006-2007 and you compare it to 2008 you will see that in 2008 it was significantly higher than 2006 and 2007 and so some people would say that it seems the problem has gotten worse.  We have to remember that when we’re looking at statistics we are looking at reported cases.”