OpinionOpinion

Nothing drives a truck through your prospects quite like the wrong man

Violence is a devastatingly routine part of life for a major segment of the population

Domestic violence victims need better support services such as accommodation and childcare. Stock image. Photograph: Getty
Domestic violence victims need better support services such as accommodation and childcare. Stock image. Photograph: Getty
Clare Moriarty
Mon Feb 10 2025 - 06:00

In countries with pronounced wealth inequality such as ours, initial conditions are highly predictive in determining an individual’s lot.

My siblings and I got repeated lectures on the fortune of “the cot you were born into”. Intended here was a reminder that serious socioeconomic disadvantage is hard to overcome, even with great effort. Equally, a great set of early circumstances is hard to squander. In most cases, good or bad luck hangs around, so be grateful if you started well.

Growing up, I noticed that an additional determinant steps in at a certain point. Let’s call it “the one at the end of the aisle” – the person you marry, the one who impregnates you, the one you head off into adult life with. There is nothing so lethal, we discover, as accidentally falling for the wrong person (statistically, this person is overwhelmingly likely to be a man). Nothing can run a truck through your life and prospects quite like the wrong man.

The wrong men, it turns out, are all over the place. Not the clichéd man who stacks the dishwasher badly, but the sort of man who assaults or rapes you in your own home. The sort of person who hurts children.

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As many as 1,600 reports of domestic violence were logged during Christmas week in this country. Alcohol and disruption to routine make the holidays particularly dangerous times for those living under threat of domestic violence, so those numbers represent a bump relative to surrounding weeks. However, “domestic violence call-outs [were] already on track to increase 5-10 per cent this year after 61,000 calls were received in 2024, according to gardaí”, the report stated.

Domestic violence is notoriously underreported. So on the one hand it’s bleakly encouraging to see more people trying to get help, but on the other it’s a stark reminder that the real number is probably much higher and that this kind of violence is a devastatingly routine part of life for a major segment of the population.

A UN report estimated that “one in three women worldwide experience physical or sexual violence, mostly by an intimate partner”. In Ireland, it’s reportedly one in four.

Childhood exposure to domestic violence can lead to chilling outcomes in later life. Stock photograph
Childhood exposure to domestic violence can lead to chilling outcomes in later life. Stock photograph

In the research on interventions, there are interesting evidence-based strategies that assist people in domestic violence scenarios. Support at every stage of the process, from making initial reports to navigating the courts, is key. Updating laws to reflect the changing nature of domestic violence – as seen with the introduction in 2019 of legislation to cover coercive control – is also crucial.

So, too, is seeing beyond abuse stereotypes; economic abuse, where the abuser retains sole access to family finances, pressures the partner to take on debt or controls working conditions with a view to keeping victims in a state of total financial dependence is increasingly appreciated as a vital element of most domestic abuse.

Children are overwhelmingly affected by violence at home and the list of subsequent experiences associated with childhood exposure is chilling. Schools play a complex role, both in monitoring children’s welfare and teaching children and teenagers about healthy relationships and warning signs.

More and better refuge spaces are sorely needed. Support to cope and recover is also necessary in the medium and longer-term

Research points to the importance of cross-curricular interventions such as explaining consent, teaching children to spot controlling and manipulative behaviour and ensuring that friend groups know how to flag inappropriate relationship dynamics when they spot them.

In a time of acute crisis for teacher recruitment and retention, this is yet another reminder of the immense safeguarding and social education responsibilities we heap on to teachers.

There’s a tendency to regard domestic violence as a terrible aberration, a kind of phantom horror at a complete, pathological remove from normal mechanisms of policy and governance. This persists despite the reality that everyone knows someone going through it, even if they do not know they do. In all likelihood, everyone knows someone perpetrating it.

Yet, domestic abuse is intricately related to the material circumstances of those experiencing it. Those inclined to ask the pernicious “Why didn’t she leave?” question of victims would benefit from imagining a pros and cons list of leaving constructed by someone experiencing such violence. The cons quickly multiply when resources are scarce.

The ability to escape abuse requires an ability to imagine a different future. Short-term, more and better refuge spaces are sorely needed. However, medium- and longer-term support to cope and recover is also necessary, and this involves safe and secure accommodation. In a climate where even those in the best of circumstances struggle to find housing, it’s easy to see why there might be pessimism among the least empowered.

Policy failures exacerbate and elongate the suffering of the most vulnerable people among us

Séamas O’Reilly recently wrote powerfully about the sad revelation that 70 per cent of 25-year-olds in Ireland are living in their family home (compared to 28 per cent in France and Germany) and the frustration of the ability to “forge the bonds of adulthood” this represents. He rightly laments our letting “obscene rents, a vulturous short-term-let economy and catatonic house prices” lock young people out of a normal transition into independence. Those same forces keep domestic victims in torturous circumstances.

It’s the same for childcare. Leaving requires belief in an ability to support yourself and, where relevant, your children, independently. This means affordable, accessible childcare.

This is not about placing blame, but recognising that present policy failures exacerbate and elongate the suffering of the most vulnerable people among us. Both at the level of preventive measures and support services, we are failing as a society to provide the things necessary to limit this suffering and empower its victims.

Dr Clare Moriarty is a Research Ireland postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College Dublin. A list of supports is available from Women’s Aid.