Domestic violence is any emotional, physical or sexual abuse by a household member, often by a partner. Rather than being an isolated event, domestic violence tends to recur and to increase in severity over time. Without intervention domestic violence will continue.

Victims of domestic violence often must wrestle with feelings of fear, loyalty, guilt and shame. Their children live in fear and are at high risk of becoming abusive adults and/or victims themselves. Because victims are often socially and geographically isolated, as well as financially dependent, many of them live out their lives in fear, unaware that help is available. Today, as more and more communities are responding to the needs of these victims, more and more victims are reaching out. Many communities now have shelters where victims and their children can go to escape the violence, vocational programs to provide victims with the skills to make it on their own, and concerned persons ready to help with emotional support and understanding.

Domestic violence cuts across lines of race, nationality, language, culture, economics, sexual orientation, physical ability, and religion to affect people from all walks of life. Domestic violence is serious wherever and whenever it happens. Racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and other forms of oppression can impact how people experience violence in their lives and how they are able to get help. Substance abuse problems or mental illnesses, while not responsible for domestic violence, can change a family’s experience of violence and the kind of treatment that is needed. People have developed specific resources to make sure that all individuals in any circumstance can get the help and support they need to end domestic violence in their lives.

In Mauritius the Domestic Violence Intervention Unit was set up soon after the Protection from Domestic Violence Act introduced on 15th August 1997. Earlier there was no legislation for Protection from domestic violence. It was on 8th March 1998, International Women’s Day, that the remaining sections of the Act were proclaimed making the Act effective.

Domestic violence has serious consequences on the victim, the children and the family as a whole and the traumatic experience may even lead to psychiatric disorders and depressions while children have behavioural problems and are affected in their studies. In most of the cases reported, tension, fear, anxiety and hatred disrupt the stability of the family. The victims are the immediate targets and have to face the direct consequences of violence. Any form of violence affects the physical or mental state of the victims. It has been observed that the health of most victims was affected. Nowadays the issue is not limited to the plight of women. We have quite a few men who are victims of this trauma, though the denunciation of the situation is perhaps much less than cases where women are the targets.

The problem is constantly worked on, yet new victims are being added to the list. A release from a constraining situation, inevitably pertains to an economic independence. Sometimes due to overexposure through the media, the problem is somewhat trivialized. People get used to the presence of this problem in our modern society. Though numerous solutions are proposed by experts and laws are voted by the authorities, the repulsive situation seems to be growing all the time. Is global society falling sick?