Women’s Aid records highest number of domestic abuse contacts in 50-year history

Women’s Aid received the highest number of domestic abuse contacts in its fifty-year history last year, with more than 31,000 contacts made to its regional and national services.

According to the charity’s 2022 annual impact report, there was a 16 per cent increase in contacts compared with 2021, with the organisation attributing some of the rise to the cost of living crisis.

During these contacts, the organisation’s support workers heard 33,990 disclosures of domestic abuse against women and children. Abuse included coercive control, emotional abuse, physical violence, sexual abuse, and economic control.

[ The grim reality of domestic violence: ‘I got pregnant and it was like he turned a dimmer switch’ ]

A total of 12 women died violently in 2022, according to the organisation’s Femicide Watch.

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Women’s Aid said every system for domestic abuse victims and survivors is “creaking at the seams”.

Sarah Benson, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said the latest statistics are a “harrowing reminder” of the levels of violence and abuse in homes and relationships in Ireland.

“While our figures are shocking, we know that they are only the tip of an enormous iceberg. One in four women in Ireland are subjected to domestic abuse. We know that so many women suffer alone, in silence and without specialist support,” she said.

Ms Benson said that last year women told the organisation that their partners or ex-partners were subjecting them to a “broad and brutal pattern of abuse”.

“Women reported assaults with weapons; constant surveillance and monitoring; relentless put downs and humiliations; the taking and sharing of intimate images online, complete control over all family finances; sexual assault, rape, and being threatened with theirs or their children’s lives,” she said.

“The impacts on these women were chilling and ranged from exhaustion, isolation, and hopelessness; to being brutalised and wounded, suffering miscarriages, poverty, feeling a loss of identity and suicide ideation, hypervigilance; and homelessness.”

Ms Benson said the court system in particular are a challenge for victims and survivors, which often create “lengthy, protracted and traumatising delays for women involved in legal proceedings”.

“We are aware that post-separation abuse is a significant issue that is often played out in family law courts. Last year alone, 26 per cent of women in contact with us were being abused by a former partner,” she said.

“The housing crisis limits options for a safe home for so many. The negative impact of inflation on family incomes, taken especially with deliberate economic abuse, exacerbate acute and frightening situations for many thousands of women and children across the country.”