Stakeholders urge families to seek help at first signs of domestic violence

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

The sus­pect­ed mur­der-sui­cide in­volv­ing young Pe­nal cou­ple Ste­fan Khan­dan, 26, and Giselle Ougrah, 23, has sparked re­newed calls for fam­i­lies to act on the warn­ing signs of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence be­fore trou­bled re­la­tion­ships es­ca­late in­to tragedy.

Psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh is urg­ing cou­ples trapped in vi­o­lent or tox­ic re­la­tion­ships to seek pro­fes­sion­al help, while call­ing on rel­a­tives and friends to re­port signs of abuse to po­lice, the Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices or the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Vic­tim Sup­port Unit.

He cau­tioned that vi­o­lence in a re­la­tion­ship should nev­er be dis­missed as a sim­ple lovers’ quar­rel.

“Once you see that vi­o­lence, it’s a sign that you should be warned that this could turn in a very, very dras­tic way,” Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day.

“A do­mes­tic vi­o­lence scene, a slap, a push, a cuss, a quar­rel, could even­tu­al­ly end in mur­der or a mur­der-sui­cide.”

Khan­dan and Ougrah were found dead at an apart­ment along Sun­dars­ingh Trace, Pe­nal, on Fri­day. Rel­a­tives have de­scribed their re­la­tion­ship as trou­bled, marked by fre­quent ar­gu­ments, jeal­ousy and con­trol­ling be­hav­iour.

Deyals­ingh said par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion should be paid to warn­ing signs such as stran­gu­la­tion, threats, ac­cess to weapons, a his­to­ry of vi­o­lence, sub­stance abuse, and es­ca­lat­ing pos­ses­sive­ness or jeal­ousy.

He stressed that fam­i­lies should not wait for abuse to be­come se­vere be­fore in­ter­ven­ing.

“Once you see some­body chok­ing an in­di­vid­ual, if they have a his­to­ry of drug abuse, if they have weapons, if they are un­kind to pets, if they have a his­to­ry of vi­o­lence to­wards oth­ers, those are ma­jor warn­ing signs,” he said.

“That stran­gu­la­tion is some­thing we specif­i­cal­ly warn women about. It is a se­ri­ous risk fac­tor and a sign to get away from that sit­u­a­tion.”

Deyals­ingh said in­ter­ven­tion should fo­cus on pro­tect­ing vic­tims while ad­dress­ing the be­hav­iour of per­pe­tra­tors. Mea­sures could in­clude coun­selling through Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, anger-man­age­ment pro­grammes, sub­stance-abuse treat­ment and broad­er so­cial sup­port.

He al­so en­cour­aged peo­ple to re­port in­ci­dents to po­lice so that the Vic­tim Sup­port Unit and oth­er agen­cies can as­sess the risk and in­ter­vene where nec­es­sary.

Deyals­ingh said fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties must be­come a more ac­tive part of the in­ter­ven­tion process.

“We have to de­vel­op a way where we are able to get this thing from the be­gin­ning, from the first slap, from the first push, from the first cuss out in pub­lic,” he said.

“That is where we need to have those per­sons in a sys­tem where we can mon­i­tor them.”

Mean­while, Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV) pres­i­dent Rober­ta Clarke called for a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary re­view of the deaths.

In a state­ment, Clarke de­scribed the in­ci­dent as an­oth­er dev­as­tat­ing ex­am­ple of do­mes­tic and in­ti­mate-part­ner vi­o­lence.

She not­ed that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence fa­tal­i­ties rarely oc­cur in iso­la­tion and are of­ten pre­ced­ed by co­er­cive con­trol, pre­vi­ous abuse, con­cerns raised by rel­a­tives, and in­ter­ac­tions with law en­force­ment or so­cial ser­vices.

A for­mal re­view, she said, could de­ter­mine whether warn­ing signs were recog­nised, whether ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­ven­tions were avail­able and whether ex­ist­ing sys­tems func­tioned ef­fec­tive­ly to pro­tect those at risk.

Clarke stressed that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is pre­ventable and that per­pe­tra­tors must be iden­ti­fied and held ac­count­able as ear­ly as pos­si­ble.

She al­so called for sur­vivors to have ac­cess to safe hous­ing, psy­choso­cial sup­port and po­lice pro­tec­tion when their safe­ty is threat­ened.

In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work pres­i­dent Adri­ana San­drine Rat­tan like­wise urged fam­i­lies to act when they recog­nise signs of abuse in a re­la­tion­ship.

She said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was deeply trou­bled by the deaths and, with­out dis­clos­ing de­tails, said its own en­quiries sug­gest­ed there had been an abu­sive dy­nam­ic and “some kind of ob­ses­sion” with­in the re­la­tion­ship.

San­drine-Rat­tan ap­pealed to par­ents and rel­a­tives not to re­main silent when they ob­serve trou­bling be­hav­iour.

“Please do not hes­i­tate to reach out for pro­fes­sion­al help. Help is avail­able, but help can on­ly come to you if you come to us,” she said.

San­drine-Rat­tan al­so urged any­one ex­pe­ri­enc­ing or wit­ness­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence to seek help ear­ly rather than wait­ing un­til a sit­u­a­tion reach­es a cri­sis point. She said in­di­vid­u­als can con­tact her or­gan­i­sa­tion via their Face­book page.