Who are abused

The body said in a client base of over 2,000 persons, 85% are female, 13% are under 18 and 73% are victims of spousal abuse.

Approximately 82% of the persons who visit the organisation's Homestretch Avenue office, are in the 18 to 50 age group.

According to reports stated by Help and Shelter, women over 50 find it difficult to challenge the abuser by seeking help. Additionally, the majority of children are female and the victims of sexual abuse.

Further, the body said people of diverse ethnic backgrounds visit, but records show that 60% of the clients come from Georgetown. This, it said, could be the reason the majority of clients are of African origin.

Legislation has little effect

But Help and Shelter has one good thing going for it - The Domestic Violence Act. According to the coordinator, it is remarkable that Guyana is among the few countries in the region with legislation to deal with domestic violence. The only problem is that there are many in the society who are unaware of its existence, or its workings.

"Some of the police and even some magistrates are not aware of the act... also some lawyers," Ms Kertzious revealed. The Act has been in place since 1996.

In an effort to bring greater awareness, the body, through the help of several international agencies, has been conducting a series of public awareness programmes.

Public education in support of the eradication of domestic and sexual violence, the organisation said in its website, is an on-going activity of Help and Shelter.

The organisation said it has facilitated public education sessions with a number of agencies including schools, private sector, service and religious organisations.

The body is also pursuing an on-going media campaign to educate the public on the issue of domestic and sexual violence. Work also continues on advocation against child abuse.

"We try to educate the police, even the magistrates. We've had training programmes in relation to the Domestic Violence Act in collaboration with CAFRA and this is not only happening in Guyana, but we have had it regionally. There, some of our officers and resource persons, such as the social workers, have been to Trinidad and Tobago to continue that training. The aim was to train a few thousand of these officers and social workers so that they would go back into the community and educate other officers in relation to the Domestic Violence Act. But in Guyana, we find that this has not been happening."

The woman said in many instances when, for example, policemen are trained in how to deal with abusive situations in a particular area, they might be transferred to another district after the sessions.

Such resource help is necessary, since the organisation has only one office, in Georgetown, and at the moment, there are no immediate plans to expand.

"What we do, depending on the funding that we received from donor agencies, is to enhance our public education to the various regions. We have in place now an education training officer, who is supposed to go out to all the various regions to talk not only about our services that we render, but also on domestic violence and the Act itself."

But she pointed out that Guyana is not alone in confronting such issues. The difference is that in Suriname, for example, which experiences the same problems, there are systems in place to handle certain aspects of domestic violence.

"Suriname has an advantage even though they don't have the act. They have a room in [at least] three police stations, especially to deal with domestic violence. When the victims go to the police, they don't have to be outside. They have a particular room with a social worker and the police. We need that here, because when the victim goes to the police station, she or he is also abused."

According to Kertzious, it is difficult for some victims to stand in the presence of others and report their cases. There have been instances, too, of women being sexually abused by policemen when they have gone to report abuse.

In other cases, because there is no privacy, men are reluctant to report cases of abuse against them. In such instances, the social worker pointed out, the man would be laughed at if he were to report that a woman had abused him.

"These are issues that are being just swept under the carpet [but] right now, we have a very small percentage (an average of 10 or 15 a year) of men who come in... They talk about women verbally abusing them. I am not too sure if there were any who were physically abused. And this could be because they have realised that Help and Shelter not only caters for women who are abused, but also for men. Some of them call in on the hotlines as well."

Reaching victims in outlying areas

The only recourse for victims in the rural areas, Kertzious told this newspaper, is for them to use the 24-hour hotline service.

"When they call in, there is supposed to be a welfare officer attached to all the regions and this is through the Human Services and Social Security Ministry. They [the ministry] should have in place a welfare officer attend to these issues... This is the only thing that we could tell persons who call into us on various issues on domestic violence. We don't have immediate solutions to the problem, so all we could do is to refer."

She said there are no immediate plans to do so, but people have been asking the organisation to expand its offices in the rural areas, especially in the Berbice and the Essequibo regions.

"The rural areas, more or less, especially the Amerindian areas, really want that, but what we try to do is, when our public education resource persons go into these areas, we try to make a connection with a particular person, like a contact person who can have all the information available to them concerning our services."

As such Kertzious said the organisation tries to visit the various areas at least twice per year so as to have a follow up to see how effective their education programme is - whether there is a decline or increase in violence.

Men need to cry more

Even as the organisation recognises that there is a serious problem in relation to the increase in violence, efforts are being made to 'reach' the perpetrator.

Already, they have had a workshop on how to deal with and counsel the perpetrator. That was funded by UNIFEM, with a resource person from London.

"But now we want to put that facility in place [through] collaboration with the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security... Because remember, they are human and they were probably abused also as a child. So there is a lot of bitterness or they don't see it as something wrong they are doing. In other cases, they might have come up in an environment [where there was abuse] and if they saw that as children, then they would think now that was the best solution - to beat your wife. So after being abused, a child lives what he/she learns."

To date, 11 persons have been trained and Kertzious said Help and Shelter should be having a follow-up programme to train the trainers.

She noted that many parents abuse their children to the extent that they train their sons not to show their emotions. As such, she said, there are now many very tense people in society.

"If you look at some people, you see the tension in them. They are so pent up. We are walking time bombs and that is because we don't talk enough and the men don't cry enough and they need to. If we don't get them to, they will abuse one partner and then they go on to another partner. It doesn't solve the problem."