Demand for women’s safety should be ‘constant hum’ across Dublin – Mary Lou

By Cate McCurry, PA

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said a demand for women’s safety should become a “constant hum” right across Dublin city, as she launched a campaign calling for zero tolerance on gender-based violence.

She said that public spaces, businesses and clubs in the city will be asked to become a space where women’s safety will be “expected and guaranteed”.

The campaign will see murals and posters across the north inner city declaring it a safe space for women.

 

Speaking in north Dublin, Ms McDonald said the campaign is a result of months of “conversation and tea”.

“It’s been a whole group of women from the north inner city,” she told the audience.

“We want a consistency of message that places are safe for women, that there is zero tolerance.

“This is a visible campaign so that we want to create a consistent hum that Dublin central, shop by shop, business by business, club by club declares itself a place of zero tolerance for domestic and gender-based violence.

“I hope, with this powerful idea, that we announce ourselves as a community that has zero tolerance for violence, for coercive control, for aggression against women and girls.

“That we ask all of our spaces, businesses, clubs everywhere that people meet and gather, to make it clear that they are places where women’s safety is expected and guaranteed.

“We figured out that it’s only when one of us dies or when a woman is brutalised that the conversation happens, and then the conversation stops.

“So this campaign is really about ensuring that the demand for our safety is a constant hum right across our community, that it’s not just on occasion, but constantly, there is that hum and that demand for our safety to be recognised.

“The message is the campaign, and the campaign is the message.

“Our job as women in the community is to put our badge, our brand, our demands and our expectation all across our community.

“We need allies, and we need our men and our boys to be our allies in this community.

“This event and this whole campaign is about celebrating the strength of our incredible community.”

She added: “Our intention is to roll out this campaign across the city and beyond that.”

Rachel Fayne, who works at the Saol Project, which helps women who suffer from addiction, mental health issues and domestic violence, said that abusers use a woman’s addiction against them.

She said that women are often blamed for their addictions.

“We know that in our community, the statistics show about one in four women have a lived experience of domestic abuse. But the latest figures say it’s roughly about one in three,” she added.

“If you look around the room and think that one in three women have experienced gender based violence, you can understand the scale of the issue.

“What you might not be aware of is that for women in addiction, it’s actually two to five times more likely for them to experience gender based violence than the rest of the population.

“A number of studies have shown that upwards of 90% of women who access addiction services have actually been through domestic violence, and that totally changes their experience domestic violence.

“Their abuser will often use that against her, and he’ll use the drugs to control her or the drink to control he, or to tell everybody that you can’t believe or you can’t trust her.”

She added: “I think the biggest message that I have, I suppose, with the zero tolerance, and the reason why we support this is because a lot of the time if you’re somebody who’s had mental health issues, addiction, homelessness and criminal background, you are looked upon as somebody who’s brought this upon yourself.

“We need to say absolutely not that nobody, under any circumstances, deserves to be treated with any kind of disrespect or violence or abuse at any point in their lives.

“This is a human rights issue, and everybody who is human deserves their human right.”

Actress and writer Roxanna Nic Liam, who grew up in inner city Dublin, said: “It’s when your friends make sexist remarks. It’s when your friends cat-call us. That’s when we need men. That’s where it starts,” she told the crowd.

“Violence comes in many forms, and we have to nip it in the bud, and we have to make sure, as a community, none of it is acceptable.”