The Taiwan Coalition Against Violence (TCAV) lauded the significant steps made in the country’s campaign to end domestic violence since the Domestic Violence Law (家暴法) was adopted 10 years ago, but said more measures, including to protect victims, were still desperately needed.
“The most important achievement [in the campaign against domestic violence] is that government authorities are now more active in helping victims. Ten years ago victims were pretty much on their own,” Gau Fehng-shian (高鳳仙), TCAV chairwoman and a Taiwan High Court judge, told a forum in Taipei yesterday.
The coalition said that domestic violence includes any violence within a family, not only violence against women and children.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The passage of the law a decade ago was a significant step, since domestic violence has traditionally been considered a family problem that the public should not interfere in, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊纓) said.
Yet despite the progress over the past decade, the forum participants all agreed that crucial improvements to the handling of abuse cases, particularly in regards to the protection offered to victims of domestic violence, were still sorely needed.
Administrative efficiency must also be improved, they said.
“It can sometimes take up to 40 days before a judge issues a protection order on behalf of a victim of domestic violence,” Gau said. “As for emergency protection orders, the law states that they should be issued within four hours of a victim filing an application, yet it usually takes one, two or sometimes even three days.”
“I wonder how effective a protection order is after that many days,” Gau said.
TCAV vice chairwoman Chou Ching-yu (周清玉) said authorities still lacked adequate manpower to deal with this serious issue.
“In the first year after the Domestic Violence Law was adopted, more than 10,000 cases of domestic violence were reported. And last year, the number grew to more than 70,000,” Chou said. “Yet the number of social workers [available] to look after the cases hasn’t changed much.”
TCAV board member Lai Mei-hui (賴美惠) attributed the lack of manpower and other resources to underfunding and said the government should set up a domestic violence victim assistance fund.
“I suggest that the government create a fund with a total of NT$3 billion [US$98.7 million] over the next 10 years to assist victims of domestic violence,” she said. “The money could come from fines for domestic violence and sexual harassment cases, as well as bail money for such cases.”
Deputy Minister of the Interior Lai Fong-wei (賴峰偉), who attended the forum, promised to communicate all the suggestions and comments to the ministry for consideration.
He said the government should consider reforms to attract more social workers to handle domestic violence cases.
“At the moment, these social workers are contractors — not public servants — and thus are offered lower wages and excluded from promotions and other government benefits,” he said. “I’ll push for a reform to include contractor social workers into the government’s promotion and benefit system so that we may attract more such people.”
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