As expected, we've had the usual dose of resonant social commentary after the alleged uxoricide of a fortnight ago. What struck me was the naïveté expressed by the national agency Appoġġ when it was declared that violent men should "seek help for their controlling violent behavior... whatever the reason or motive for the murders, they (the murderers) needed help and they needed to have taken the responsibility for seeking this help. Had they done this, these femicides may also have been prevented". Would aggressors and potential murderers seek help on their own initiative? Unlikely. Ask any psycho-therapist and s/he will tell you how hard it is for these people to ask for help, especially since they do not even realise or admit they need it.
That a government agency releases these kind of statements is only one of the issues that really bother me. Another is the very meager budget allocation for the domestic violence unit. It also worries me when I hear of cases where the aggressor, for some reason, is not evicted from the family home even though there are provisions in our law that allow this. We must not add to this shilly-shallying to the detriment of the victims - current and prospective - by leaving it up to the perpetrator of violence to seek professional help.
The White Paper on domestic violence which Labour had published in 1998 states that therapy and training programmes for the aggressors should be part of their conviction conditions and be made mandatory with probation orders. There ought to be the faculty to "impose apposite treatment on the aggressor".
Bail should be given on condition that the offender completes, to the satisfaction of the court, a programme designed to treat aggressors. This programme ought to be offered through a government agency, an NGO or a private provider (if the government is finding it so difficult to see to such programmes), which is approved by the Department of Social Policy. If the offender is in a position to pay, a reasonable fee must be paid for participation to the treatment programme. But if the offender is unemployed and maybe unable to pay, he shouldn't be denied treatment because of this.
After the Catherine Agius killing, the Women's Study Group declared that "the legal authorities need to take action against violent perpetrators before the act happens and not after". And this is exactly the point. More often than not, in such cases of extreme violence there would be a string of reports preceding the final act.
The government then got its wrist slapped from its own Domestic Violence Commission which, again, after the recent serious cases, pointed out that the country "had to do better" in this area of policy.
On the same day of the killing of Mrs Agius, two men appeared in court charged with injuring their wives at their respective homes. Both men were ordered not to approach the women and were in these particular cases, thankfully, forbidden to stay in the same residences. According to newspaper reports, both aggressors were granted bail even though one of them had a pending case also involving domestic violence. The latter was ordered not to leave home without the court's permission. But this is not enough. Once out, and without having been treated, such cases will usually, in no time, be on the look-out for the next victim. It is not enough to separate the assailant from his victim if he is not treated professionally for his aggression.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the proverbial needle's eye than for an aggressor to realise he needs help, admit it and seek it. It is, thus, unlikely that a psycho-therapist is confronted with a person who, of his own accord, comes forward and says: Cure me, I'm a violent misogynist. That is why we have to take up the cudgels for the perpetrators of domestic violence.
Discussions on these Neanderthal attitudes come to the fore when tragedies like those of Mrs Agius strike but, scratch the surface, and those outlooks are, lamentably, still the norm even though not carried to the extremities of murder. I think the male-dominated Cabinet - with no woman given the specific brief on these issues - does not take violence against women seriously (look at the budget allocation for this area; look at how it took this government seven years to pass the law after Labour issued the White Paper in 1998) because there is this frisson attached to giving free reign to misogyny. Surely, this has also to do with many men's anxieties and feelings of disempowerment, which are seldom addressed albeit they cut very deep. The Times reported that Mrs Agius was stabbed to death "over the division of assets".
The more women learn about, and try to get, their and their children's dues, the more marginalised men may feel they have become. They interpret this as tyranny and indignity and, thus, the fiercer the violence and the bigger the split-personality as in the difference between the charming exterior and the angry, raging, volcano-waiting-to-erupt interior. These men need working on by professionals if we are to seriously engage in the mitigation of violence against women.
Dr Dalli is a Labour member of Parliament.