There has been a rise in the number of deaths from domestic violence, Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite revealed today.
Speaking in Parliament on the Domestic Violence ( Protection Orders) (Amendment) Bill, 2016 Brathwaite did not divulge the numbers nor the time frame, but he pleaded with Barbadians to find a better way to deal with their problems than resorting to violence. However, Member of Parliament for St Thomas Cynthia Forde had earlier stated that there were 55 such deaths over a ten-year period.
Brathwaite recalled that as a young person he was aware of cases where women would be beaten by their companions on a Friday night after the men had returned from the village rum shop.
He said that some people would like to believe that that sort of behaviour no longer existed in a modern Barbados, but this was not the case.
The Attorney General also disclosed that there was a “marked increase” in protective orders, saying this showed that people are taking action to protect themselves from domestic violence.
The St Philip South MP called for a sustained education programme to help arrest the scourge of domestic violence and for ways to address the level of violence that continues to sweep across the island, with young people as the major perpetrators.
Government’s chief legal officer also called on Barbadians to report cases of domestic violence, arguing that in all cases it was not about the loss of a life of an individual, but a loss to an extended family.
