Sat, Nov 28, 2009 page2

• Negligence puts victims of domestic violence in peril

  SAVING LIVES A professor said she believed that deaths could have been prevented if judges had paid more attention to the needs of victims of domestic violence

  • By Loa Iok-sin / STAFF REPORTER
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  Negligence by authorities means many victims of domestic violence live under threat from their abusers despite court protection orders, academics told a conference yesterday.

  “I’ve looked into 80 fatal domestic violence cases from 2005 to 2007 and found that 11 of the cases involved victims who had been issued with a court protection order,” National Chinan University sociology professor Wang Pei-ling (王佩玲) told the conference organized by the Taiwan Coalition Against Violence (TCAV) in Taipei. “This year alone, 14 out of 33 victims of fatal domestic violence were under protection orders.”

  “This indicates that something must have gone wrong with the system,” she said.

  Wang said she believed that some of the deaths could have been prevented if the judges handling the cases had paid more attention to the needs of victims of domestic violence.

  In one case, a victim who had been abused several times and constantly threatened by the abuser — and had applied for a protection order three times — was only granted a class one protection order.

  There are five categories of protection orders: category one prohibits the abuser from further abusing the victim; category two prohibits the abuser from threatening the victim; category three prohibits the abuser from harassing and contacting the victim; category four requires the abuser to stay away from the residence where the victim lives; category five requires an abuser to stay a certain distance from the victim.

  “Categories one and two are more symbolic — if the judge had been more careful and realized that the victim had already been granted a protection order twice before, the tragedy could have been prevented,” Wang said.

  In another case, when a prosecutor asked the judge to put a man surnamed Chen (陳) — who had repeatedly beaten his girlfriend, even after she was granted a protection order — in detention, the judge freed him on bail, only orally warning him not to commit the offense again.

  Two days after being released, he stabbed his girlfriend to death.

  “This would not happen if the judge took more account of the protection of victims,” Wang said, adding that law enforcement agencies and social workers should not consider a case closed once the court issues a protection order.

  Chang Jung Christian University professor Chen Show-feng (陳秀峰) agreed.

  “There was a case where a woman was shot dead by her husband in August,” Chen Show-feng said. “Investigations found that the woman had been abused by her husband before. She had not only been granted a protection order, but had also reported the abuse to a local police station a month before her death — but the police said they didn’t have any record of it.”

  Cheng Show-feng urged police and local authorities to keep a record of domestic violence cases in their precincts and follow them up.

  “Protection orders are good, but not sufficient, that’s why there are so many cases in which victims with protection orders are threatened 11 years after the system was put in place,” TCAV chairwoman Chou Ching-yu (周清玉) said. “Government authorities and social workers must be more aggressive in looking after victims to prevent further injury.”
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