According to UNICEF, domestic violence and intimate partner violence are highly prevalent in the Caribbean, with an estimated 45 percent of women in the region experiencing physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.
Co-Director of the Grenada Legal Aid and Counselling Clinic and coordinator of the Man to Man Programme, Tyrone Buckmire is a champion of male to male intervention as a key strategy in addressing domestic and intimate partner violence.
“We’ve had over 700 men referred into the programme. We’ve had 5 hundred and 60 plus of those men meet the criteria for successful completion. There is a regional criteria that says you have to attend these many sessions, your attendance and participation must be such and such in order to be considered a successful applicant.”
Mr. Buckmire highlighted pertinent statistics indicating that the initiative has been working with perpetrators of domestic violence in Grenada for more than 21 years.
“We know up to today the recidivism rate, that is the rate of men who have offended in a similar, committed a similar offence, that recidivism rate is less than 10 percent. So if you had 5 hundred and 60 men going through and as far as we know, only about 56 of them have committed any similar offence, I think anybody would agree that a 90 percent rate of non re-offending is successful.”
Mr. Buckmire will host a public lecture titled Domestic Violence Prevention: What Works For and With Men. The event will take place on May 19 and is being held in collaboration with the Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Trinidad.