SECOND OPINION:Prevention efforts reinforce a victim-blaming culture, writes JACKY JONES
AGENCIES WITH responsibility for preventing domestic, sexual and gender-based violence usually focus on giving advice to victims, and rarely on the perpetrators and their behaviour. For example, women are often advised by gardaí to protect themselves by not walking home alone late at night, particularly if there has been a recent rape in the area. Women are expected to curtail their right to move around freely. No one suggests a male curfew. Children receive “stay safe” programmes in schools which makes safety the child’s responsibility. A recent campaign by the HSE gave older people advice on protecting themselves from abuse.
New guidelines from Cosc, the National Office for the Prevention of Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence, stress the importance of focusing on perpetrators. As they point out, prevention focusing on victims reinforces negative stereotypes and actually increases the vulnerability of women, children and older people. When fewer women walk home alone, it becomes less safe to do this. Children cannot be expected to protect themselves – this is the responsibility of the adults in their lives.
Prevention programmes that focus on advice for possible victims reinforce a victim-blaming culture where the perpetrators are not held to account. Can you imagine if other crimes were responded to in the same way? Burglaries, for example, could be categorised by the age and sex of the victims, and whether or not the home owners had left someone to mind the house. Silly isn’t it?
These welcome guidelines are part of a national strategy to reduce the incidence of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence in Ireland by changing the societal norms and behaviours that support these oppressions. What difference will it make if these guidelines are followed by the media and all sectors whose job it is to provide services to victims and deal with perpetrators?
First, we would not run campaigns to heighten awareness of elder abuse as if age is the problem. It is not. The image projected is of vulnerable older people, usually portrayed in the media by pictures of just their slippers or their wrinkled hands. Older people are no more vulnerable than others who live or have relationships with abusive people. Perpetrators are indeed three times more likely to abuse people over 80 than those aged 65 to 79, but it could equally be argued that young women are more at risk of abuse than middle-aged women. Young men are much more at risk of violence than older men. The sad reality is that there are plenty of people in Ireland who feel entitled to deprive other people of their human right to personal safety.
If these guidelines are followed we would not label some victims as “innocent”, which implies that there are guilty victims. Nobody at the receiving end of someone else’s violent or abusive behaviour is to blame in any way for that behaviour, regardless of the circumstances. We would not fund any new women’s refuges. Instead, we would have men’s hostels where the perpetrators could stay until their crimes are dealt with by the law.
Unlike victims of violence and abuse, who can be any age, sex or social class, all perpetrators share common behaviour characteristics and belief systems. They believe they have the right to exert power over others. All forms of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence – against adults or children – involve this abuse of power and the experience of powerlessness by the victim. Society’s response must be to return power and control to the survivor – by holding the perpetrators to account.
While society’s response to crimes against children has dramatically improved, we are still too focused on the age aspect of the abuse of older people and not enough on the perpetrators. These are usually the sons, daughters, spouses or other relatives of the abused person. As in all other forms of abuse, older people often feel ashamed and are afraid to report the abuse.
Like younger victims, they fear losing their home life and being put into long-stay residential care. This is because society’s response to violence has all too often been to remove the child, put the battered woman into a refuge, and put the old person into a home.
All of this reinforces the myth that the victim is at fault. A new focus on perpetrator behaviour, choices and actions will make it easier for people of all ages to report their abuser to the appropriate authorities and ensure they are held fully accountable.
Dr Jacky Jones is a former regional manager of health promotion with the HSE