The reality of family stigma that protects abusers- personal reflection
*Names have been changed and blog is roughly written without edits * A young woman was flailing her arms out her barred windows, eyes full of tears, screaming that she's been locked in. That was the sight that greeted me when I decided to go see my cousin following a hunch that she could be in trouble. Last week, The Fiji Times reported, a woman was allegedly killed in Vatuwaqa by her de-facto partner . It's a tragic story that hit very close to home because this could have been my cousin. Fiji has one of the highest domestic violence rates in the world , with 64 percent of women having experienced intimate partner violence. (FWCC, 2011) According to research, it takes an average of 868 days for women to report their matters of violence. (FWRM, 2017) For a lot of people, it's hard to believe that women stay in violent relationships for that long, and often, the question is asked, why not leave? Why take so long to report violence? According to a 2017 research, women had t...
