Fitzgerald says women who are victims of violence need more sympathy and support

THERE were various State agencies responsible for bits of the problem of crimes of violence against women, but there was no coherent national strategy for dealing with the women concerned, the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, said yesterday.

Addressing a seminar on Women in Conflict, in the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, Co Wicklow, the Minister said abused women needed support from gardai, the courts, doctors and hospitals as well as from housing, child care and financial benefit agencies.

"Women need to be believed, to be treated with sympathy and professionalism, but very often the hospital or doctor does not know what to do, they don't have a written policy," she said. Women had had mixed experience of gardai, while in rural Ireland a parish priest might have a view on keeping families together which could result in a woman remaining in a violent situation.

The Minister said the Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Unit, set up in Dublin in 1994 was still the only statutory body with a written policy on the treatment of abused women. This was a situation which she hoped the Government's Working Group on Violence Against Women, which she chaired, would tackle.

The group plans to draw up a national strategy to co ordinate the approach of all statutory bodies to the problem of domestic violence against women. Its report is due in February.

Ms Olive Braiden, director of the Rape Crisis Centre, told the seminar women lived with the threat of male violence. "It is the threat which stops you going for a bottle of milk if the streets are dark or quiet, or stops you answering the door at night."

Ms Braiden also criticised the courts system, which she said saw women rape victims classed as witnesses. This meant that they were not entitled to be represented by a barrister in court. She said this forced women to prove they were victims.

The journalist and author, Ms Kate Shanahan, said abused women in Ireland often had difficulty with the media. Aspects of court reporting were unnecessarily prurient while the public often confused support, or otherwise, for an individual with support, or otherwise, for the issue. The result was that many women felt that there was a price to be paid for going public.