Cost of living in Offaly may be 'pressure point' for domestic abuse as reports rise

The CEO of Offaly Domestic Violence Support Services (ODVSS) has said that the organisation has seen a significant rise in domestic violence cases in recent times.

CEO Anne Clarke said that the organisation saw a rise of a thousand more client contacts between 2023 to 2024, according to their end of year report. 

"Our service is a bit different than other services in that we also support male victims of domestic abuse.

"We also support family abuse, where if there's a brother or sibling that may be sharing a house....we also support people around adult child-parent violence...if there's adult children perpetrating abuse on parents....so we're a little bit different, it's not just intimate partner relationships it's inclusive of all family violence".

Anne explained that the housing crisis and cost-of-living are an example of factors for domestic abuse and they are pressure points for families, but says "however, if domestic abuse, if that power and control is present in the relationship, it will be there regardless of any pressure point. 

"For sure, we have seen an increase in the number of adult to child abuse and parents presenting to the service.....absolutely, we've seen that rise happening over the last number of years and it's year in, year out, we're seeing parents having to access that support potentially having to get either a barring order or a protection order against a child because of that abuse and fear within the home.

"Obviously it's a different situation where a lot of adult children are living at home because they can't afford to buy homes or rent homes on their own so potentially that does then leave parents susceptible if abuse has already been present and it increases that risk for parents.

"Economic abuse is a significant part of domestic abuse and coercive financial control is a significant part...a lot of women may not be able to leave because they can't afford to be able to sustain themselves outside of that home.

"In the past we would have had women who might have had to return back because they can't either pay the rent or feed the children, they can't do both. 

"To them it's about their children having a bed to sleep in and food to provide for them and potentially they do have to sometimes return back into that relationship".

Anne said that she knows this because in almost 84% or 85% of cases that are presented to them, they will have financial abuse attached to them.

"So some women, not all, may not be able to leave because of that financial dependency".

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Anne said that the organisation has seen women coming to them to escape all sorts of abuse, "coercive control is very much there in nearly every single case that comes in the door".

The organisation based in Tullamore, works across Offaly to help victims of domestic abuse in many different ways.

"We do one-to-one support, which is confidential. We do court accompaniments to court for any of the court orders that are needed. We also do all the court paperwork that's needed for that whole process.

"We provide outreach support within the community, so if anyone can't access our main office here in Tullamore, we go out to all the different locations around Offaly and provide that support out there. 

"Again, all confidential. We have three safe houses in different areas of Offaly that provide safe accommodation for women who potentially have to leave their abusive relationship.

"They are supported by a designated safe house project worker. We have a children's hub here as well, where we provide one-to-one support to children. We also provide therapeutic group support to children via our Help Enhance Healing Programme.

"We also provide play therapy and equine therapy for support and along with that, we run a teen dating violence awareness campaign throughout all the schools in Offaly. 

"Most recently, we just held our seminar on teen dating violence in the Tullamore Court [Hotel] where we had over 300 young students attend.

"We provide free counselling as well for clients. We also have an ethnic minority community development project and that's for the five counties in the Midlands; Roscommon, Longford, Laois, Offaly and Westmeath, where we look to support ethnic minority women and help to break down barriers that may prevent them from seeking support. 

"We do training for hairdressers and we call that Dyeing to Talk, so we create new pathways of referrals into the service and have a whole-of-community response for working towards the zero tolerance of domestic abuse within the community. 

"We also have two hot-lines, we have a hot-line that is open from 9am to 5pm and we also have a text support line for those who may not be able to talk on the phone but need to have that text support from one of our support teams."

Anna said that the organisation currently has a red flag campaign happening during the 16 Days of Action which started on Monday, November 24 and runs right through to December 10. 

"We have red flags all around the county, over 80 flags attached to polls showing people what is a red flag is.

"It could be isolation, monitoring everything you're doing, maybe controlling where you go, who you see, being threatening to the point where you're in fear in that home and you're not feeling safe.

"So all these red flags are around the county to help people see what abuse is and we need to make it more visible. 

"But predominantly we would see everything from physical abuse to sexual abuse, to coercive control to financial abuse, to psychological abuse, to mental abuse, to religious abuse, to social abuse. All of those things.

The 16 days of activism, according to Anne, is the elimination of violence against women and children and it is a global movement and Ireland is part of it.

"Nearly every service in the country are part of doing some form of awareness around those aspects of violence against women. 

Anne said that ODVSS has an event coming up on December 4 by Jacqueline Connolly, who wrote an amazing book called Deadly Silence and she'll be reading from that in the Tullamore Library on Thursday, December 4, at 5.30pm. Jacqueline's sister, Clodagh Hawe, was murdered in her own home along with her three children by Alan Hawe.

"That is a free event, but people would have to contact us for tickets, and they can do so by emailing us on info@odvss.ie or by phoning 05793 51796. 

If you or anyone you know has been affected by any of the topics discussed in this article, you can contact Offaly Domestic Violence Support Service on their helpline number which is: 05793 51886 or their text support line which is: 086 441 9154.