Church of Ireland may use churches as ‘safe places’ from domestic abuse

The Church of Ireland is investigating how parish churches may be designated “safe places” for people suffering domestic abuse.

It is a proposed response to “the terrifying incidence of domestic abuse and violence in Ireland today,” said Primate and Archbishop of Armagh Richard Clarke on Thursday.

“What is immensely disturbing is that the incidence of reported violence is so high (and we know that it cuts across all social classes and all socio-economic groups) that we must therefore assume that it is present within every community represented here today,” he said in the Presidential address to the Church’s General Synod which is taking place in Limerick for the first time this year.

“Globally, at least 1 in 3 women, or up to one billion women, have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in their lifetimes.

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“In the Republic of Ireland, one in five women in a relationship have been abused by a present or former partner. In Northern Ireland, the Police Service responds to an incident of domestic violence every nineteen minutes on average, day and night, seven days a week.

“In Ireland as a whole, 1 in 7 women and 1 in 17 men experience severe domestic violence. Domestic abuse may be violent, but it may also be more subtle – economic or psychological – but nonetheless devastating in its impact.

“And we know, much domestic violence and abuse goes unreported, whether through fear or manipulation,” he said.

‘Reverse this notion of what we are’

It was happening “in every community. It is under our noses, perhaps even in our own families. People who suffer in this way must be encouraged to seek help.

“One of the possibilities that we are investigating in Armagh Diocese is how parish churches can be designated as “safe places” for those who are suffering domestic abuse.

“For many people, in every part of this island, the Church does not have a reputation as being a place of safety, far from it. Surely we can work together to reverse this notion of what we are,” he said.

Speaking of Ireland’s response to the current refugee crisis he described it as “a mixed picture.”

In neither jurisdiction on the island were “many refugees being admitted, a few thousand at most on an island with a total population of almost six and a half million,” he said.

All who are in Ireland as refugees or asylum seekers “should be met with the dignity, justice and humanitarian support that they deserve, and ideally within a programme that is integrated across the entire board.

“This should include those asylum seekers who are already in the country and have been so for some time, a category that can very easily be forgotten.

“But one thing of which we must be certain is that those who are here among us as bona fide refugees have not left their homelands for motives other than sheer desperation,” he said.