SAV-LA-MAR, Westmoreland

The Social Development Commission (SDC) is trying to set up over a dozen spousal abuse support groups in Westmoreland to deal with a growing tide of domestic violence in the parish.

The SDC hopes these groups – subsets of the local Community Development Committees (CDC’s) in each of the five SDC community development areas – will address what it describes as a “real and rampant” problem.

“The plan is to establish three in each of the five areas which will give us on average 15,” SDC Parish manager Ron Daley told the Observer West, following a one-day seminar on domestic abuse last week.

Some 83 communities across the parish participated.

Daley said the support groups, which will be established in Grange Hill, Darliston, Negril, Whitehouse and Savanna-La-Mar will comprise pastors, social workers, health professionals and counsellors.

“Over 20 professionals have already volunteered to be apart of this,” he outlined. ” These are people who have the experience and know how, to deal with people having this sort of experience.”

Specific figures for Westmoreland were not available up to press time but overall statistics from the Jamaica Constabulary Force for 2008 show that 2,501 cases of domestic violence were heard in the four family courts across the island. Additionally, figures from the Montego Bay branch of Women’s Inc, a support group for women in crises, said they dealt with over 500 cases last year with about 160 of them being women abused by their spouses.

Daley said last week’s seminar was staged in response to the result of a series of meetings in the Whitehouse/Negril area, which found spousal abuse at the heart of dysfunctional families in which poor parenting was the number one social problem.

“We found there was a strong co-relation between poor parenting and spousal abuse,” said Daley.

With the problem concentrated at the community level, Daley said the main aim of the support groups was “accessibility” and confidentiality for the abused spouse, usually the female partner in a marriage or common-law-union who suffers physical and or emotional/psychological abuse from the male partner.

He said a number of focus group discussions had revealed that the abuse usually takes place at nights when the woman was vulnerable and many of the essential services such as the police and Victim Support are unavailable to her.

“We found that many of the abuses takes place at night, when you have nowhere to go; can’t bawl out; the police station is locked and you can’t run to your neighbour because people will know you business,” he said, during his address to the community representatives who turned out last week at the Sean Lavery Hall in Savanna-La-Mar.

Sometimes its very hard to reach the police in the night and as we have heard, as well the Victim Support group is not always available, so obviously they need this sort of support which is easily accessible in the community and manned by professionals who are trusted to maintain confidentiality,” he noted.