Sir, - Two related events were reported in The Irish Times (December 11th). One, the first ever conference on male victims of domestic abuse, entitled "The Silence is Over" was run by AMEN, the support group for abused men. It was boycotted by Government ministers and Government departments generally.
It was one of the most moving and informative events of its kind I have ever witnessed. The fact that AMEN has received over 3,000 calls for help in the year since it was set up shows the scale of the problem. The fact that four abused men were empowered and found the courage to speak out about their experiences in public is a tribute to how much AMEN and its founder Mary Cleary have achieved in such a short time without any Government funding or support.
The attitude of the Government to this organisation and men's issues generally is disgraceful, though not surprising. Social policy in this country is dictated by the feminist movement and men's life experiences are deliberately excluded. The result is that we have a family law system that has been successfully designed to (a) privilege women, (b) persecute men and (c) enrich greedy unscrupulous lawyers.
The other event was the announcement by Minister Mary Wallace of an additional £5 million to assist women victims of domestic violence. Your readers can decide for themselves whether the timing of this announcement on the day of the conference was a mere co-incidence. Ms Wallace's comment about dealing with domestic violence on a gender-neutral basis was most surprising given the contemptuous treatment of AMEN by her Government. At the conference we were informed that over the past year Ms Wallace had revised her estimate of the percentage of victims who are men from 5 per cent to 20 per cent. In the circumstances and in the light of her comments we await her announcement of the allocation of £1.25 million to AMEN to assist male victims.
It is also of significance that on that same day John Hume and David Trimble received Nobel Peace prizes. The troubles in Northern Ireland had their genesis in a political establishment which facilitated the persecution of one section of the community to maintain the supremacy of the other. Today in the Republic the political establishment is facilitating the persecution of men in the family law system at the behest of feminist supremacists. It would do well to recall two of the most prophetic phrases used by enlightened commentators on Northern Ireland 30 years ago: "Injustice is a form of violence" and "Violence breeds violence". - Yours, etc., Michael Stephens,
Tallaght, Dublin 24.