A new programme aimed at preventing domestic violence by integrating the work of the criminal justice system with that of victim support agencies was inaugurated by the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Brian Lenihan, in Dublin yesterday.
Aimed at increasing the safety of victims of domestic violence and reducing the recidivism rate, it will be based in the Dun Laoghaire and Bray District Court areas.
In will include an intervention programme for the perpetrators of domestic violence, which will be modelled on an existing programme in Cork, the Cork Domestic Violence Project. Two-thirds of those who completed this programme changed their abusing behaviour.
Perpetrators of domestic violence will be referred to this programme by the District Courts in Dun Laoghaire and Bray, following a prosecution by gardaí.
Their progress will be monitored by the Probation and Welfare Service and overseen by the courts. Failure to comply with a court order to participate in such a programme will result in other sanctions, including prison.
This intervention programme will be overseen by the new body, the National Domestic Violence Intervention Agency, headed by Mr Don Hennessy.
Mr Hennessy has worked with the Cork Domestic Violence Project and as a marriage counsellor. The NDVIA will set up a perpetrator programme in the Dun Laoghaire area, with facilitators trained and supervised by the Cork DVP.
The new agency will focus on both the victim and the perpetrator and will co-ordinate the work of the Garda, the courts, the Probation and Welfare Service, the perpetrator programme and victim support services.
It will therefore reduce the necessity for the victim to approach a number of different agencies. Ms Denise Charleton, director of Women's Aid, said studies showed that if women were supported through the legal process they stayed with it, but they often withdrew complaints from fear.
The approach of the NDVIA is based on a US model which has been extensively used elsewhere, she said.
Where it has been introduced, this model has been found to reduce the number of domestic violence murders by at least half, and sometimes more.
The programme will bring the perpetrator into the judicial system, offering a graded level of sanctions, including the perpetrator intervention programme which will report to the court regularly.