Seanad debates

Wednesday, 2 July 2025

Domestic Violence (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee Stage

 

2:00 am

Photo of Tom ClonanTom Clonan (Independent)

I thank cross-party colleagues for restoring this Bill to the Order Paper. In regard to what Senator Stephenson said, there is a fetishisation of violence against women in our public discourse. It is in popular culture, literature, film and in particular online. It is a very powerful recurring narrative and it is a construct of a patriarchal society.

Senator Stephenson spoke to some of the statistics. It struck me just before we came up here that on average one woman is murdered on this island every month. That has been consistent over the past five years. In the vast majority of cases, they are murdered by an intimate partner in their own home. As Senator Ryan said, this is something that inhabits the family. It is in every aspect of Irish life and it is systemic.

As a young army officer 30 years ago, I started a PhD in DCU. As part of that, I spoke to my colleagues, my sisters in arms, in the Defence Forces about their experiences of military service. Of the 60 women I interviewed, 59 disclosed some form of discrimination, harassment or sexual violence up to and including rape. That was 59 out of 60 women. This speaks to Senator Stephenson's point. When I reported that as part of the PhD process, there began a very aggressive and sustained campaign of reprisal against me and my family for calling out sexual violence. Is that not interesting? As a species, we can give a moral case for lying or stealing, perhaps to save one's own life, and we can even provide a moral rationale for killing in defence of one's own life or that of someone else. The one thing,as a species, however, for which there can be no moral or ethical rationale is sexual abuse and domestic abuse, particularly of somebody where there is a betrayal of trust. Yet, for calling that out, there is a sustained campaign of reprisal. There is huge pushback in our patriarchal society against the idea that this ought to be dealt with in an absolutely definitive manner.

When the Women of Honour came forward in 2021 and made fresh disclosures of sexual violence, I experienced a fresh round of reprisal. When the judge-led inquiry, the independent review group, made its report, I experienced, yet again, a further round of reprisal. One of the most perplexing and traumatising aspects of that is that some of the people engaged in the reprisal were women. That speaks to the fact that all of us, men and women, have a responsibility not to collaborate with and extend the patterns of thought and behaviour of patriarchal thought. Anybody is capable of it. That is how profound and deeply woven into our society it is. That is why I support this Bill and why I co-sponsored it with the then Senator Martin.

When a survivor of domestic violence who is targeted in this way takes that step to seek help or, under God knows what set of circumstances, to seek an emergency barring order, that is the point of an acceleration of risk where many people are murdered. Very often, femicide happens in the context of somebody seeking help outside of the relationship. That is why it is so important to increase the penalty for anybody who is in breach or in variation of those orders. I commend all of my colleagues and again commend Senator Ryan. When we speak to these matters and share our experiences and the trauma around them, it is really powerful for all of those people who cannot and do not have the opportunity to do so. It is very important. I thank the Minister of State for accepting Senator Ryan's amendment. I echo what Senator Gallagher said in that I hope we can get this legislation enacted as quickly as possible.

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