Of Course I welcome two full pages of the Press promoting Amnesty International's campaign to tackle complacency surrounding domestic violence (November 10). Bravo.
Interested, I visited the website for more information. (www.problemwhatproblem.com)
While sincerely committed people have spoken up (Hugh Bayley, Della Cannings and Richard Best) and said all the right things, I think there is one aspect of the campaign that has perhaps not come through in the Press article as strongly as it should.
With reference to the website, the campaign aims to confront the way we tolerate, justify and ignore violence against women.
So while there is a definite need to support victims and work with perpetrators, there is also an equally significant need for society, communities, and individuals to be very clear about their responsibilities.
Is knowing that violence against a woman is taking or has taken place and keeping silent about it colluding in the act?
Two quotes from the website make the point:
1) The persistent belief that violence against women is a private issue seriously impedes attempts to eradicate it
2) This campaign is especially targeting the vast majority of non-offending men who may tend to think that this is "nothing to do with me".
We are saying that it is very much this group who can move attitudes forward in this area.
Hugh Bayley makes a good point that the victims are people we interact with everyday: our friends and neighbours, our colleagues and members of our family.
Let's take this further.
The perpetrators are people we interact with everyday: our friends and neighbours, our colleagues and members of our family, from prisons to ivory towers.
Kate Ormond,
Park Grove,
York
Updated: 09:40 Monday, November 15, 2004
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