Sir, - We welcome the recent statement from the Catholic Hierarchy on the unacceptability of domestic violence and the fact that "a wife, or husband, has the right, and possibly the duty, not to stay in a seriously abusive relationship."
The issue of domestic violence in Irish society was first highlighted over 30 years ago by the women's movement, and it is only in recent years that there has been more public awareness of the nature and extent of it. As a result, the Government set up a Task Force on Violence against Women, which reported in 1977. Following from its recommendations, regional planning committees and local area networks have been established throughout the country.
While the remit of these bodies is violence against women - based on research findings in Ireland and worldwide that in the majority of cases women are the victims - we recognise that men also can be victims of domestic violence. Therefore, we regret the divisive tone of John Waters's article of September 4th, where he is in effect minimising the scale of the problem of violence against women and trivialising the nature of the problem by his comments about clothing allowances.
In his attempts to raise the issue of domestic violence perpetrated against men, why does John Waters feel the need to undermine the position of women who are victims of domestic violence? Surely this is counter-productive. We would ask him to produce the evidence that "every independent study in the Western world surveying men and women has found that domestic violence is roughly a 50-50 phenomenon".
We agree with the Bishops' statement that there is no acceptable level of violence. While our work is focused on violence against women, we believe that all victim/survivors of domestic violence, male and female, should be treated with dignity and respect. - Yours, etc.,
Terry Carton, Fran O'Grady, Martina Power, Yvonne Pim, On behalf of Wexford Local Area Network on Violence against Women, Clifford Street, Wexford.