Domestic violence reports have decreased 8% during the period of April to June 2024 when compared to the same period last year.
While this may seem like an encouraging trend, the ComPol said it's nothing to celebrate. He explained that a decrease in reports just means that women and children are suffering in silence.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"I'm not going to celebrate the decline in domestic violence cases because there are many women and children out there who are being violated everyday and they are not coming forward because they fear the perpetrator or in some cases the perpetrator is the breadwinner and so these women suffer in silence so it is not an indication to say that it is down because the truth is that we do have a number of domestic violence cases everyday, it's just that many times the women don't want to go beyond telling the police in some cases because they know we're going to arrest, they don't even want to give a statement so while it may sound good on one hand, on the other hand I think that more needs to be done still to be able to encourage women in particular who are victims of domestic violence to ne able to come forward and make reports to the police and I think also one of the things that we're seeing is that the stand that we have taken to make sure that perpetrators are arrested and taken before the courts, that, we hope, will serve as a deterrent to those offenders to know that even if my wife doesn't want anything, the police will still take me before the court and let her go before the court and say she wants nothing."
