Lawyers and activists for domestic violence victims' rights yesterday said that many victims receive inadequate protection due to the attitudes of judges and discrepancies and delays in the issuing of protective restraining orders.
The views were voiced at a news conference at which the Ju-dicial Reform Foundation (民間司法改革基金會) presented a report on the effects of the implementation of the Domestic Violence Prevention and Control Law (家庭暴力防治法), which came into force a year ago.
According to lawyers at the conference, many judges have still failed to grasp the essence of the legislation and victims of domestic violence receive insufficient protection as a result.
"Many judges still consider domestic violence incidents as purely domestic matters, adhering to traditional Chinese notions that place family harmony at a premium and frown on victims who take legal action," said John Chen (陳傳岳), the foundation's chairman.
As a result, some judges tend to find fault with victims rather than perpetrators, questioning, for instance, whether they have had affairs or otherwise provoked the perpetrator, according to the report.
The report stresses, however, that: "The purposes of the law are to ensure the safety of victims and to prevent violence, not to license moral inquisition and the making of value judgements on the part of the judiciary."
Activists have urged judges to change the way they view such matters. In addition, they want Article 1 of the law amended so that "improving family harmony" is deleted as one of the law's goals.
Activists also pointed to problems relating to the issuance of protective restraining orders.
The report identifies slowness in issuing such orders as the most common problem, resulting in failures to provide protection in time. In addition, there are substantial discrepancies between the practices of different courts over the issuance of the orders.
The foundation's statistics indicate that in the past year the Taitung District Court, for example, approved 98.59 percent of petitions for restraining orders submitted to it, while Taipei District Court only approved 77.84 percent.
"The problem is that the courts are given too much discretion," said lawyer Lai Fang-jue (
"We need far greater uniformity of standards so that victims have a clearer idea as to the circumstances under which an order is likely to be granted," Lai said.
Even restraining orders, however, do not guarantee a high quality of life. "In many cases, the victims face humiliating isolation in their families," Lai said.
The Domestic Violence Prevention and Control Law took effect on June 24 last year. Despite the misgivings voiced yesterday, law-yers generally welcomed the law as a positive step forward.
"The law was basically trans-planted from the West," Lai said. "This was a transplant of a piece of Western legislation without the accompanying Western culture."
In Taiwan, Lai said, it was the law that was leading the way forward on domestic violence, despite -- rather than because of -- society. It was not surprising, she argued, that attitudes in society at large were not always in keeping with the spirit of the law.
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