Domestic and intimate partner violence

Section 7 of the Criminal Law Act of Trinidad and Tobago abolishes the presumption that a wife who commits an offence in the presence of her husband does so under his coercion. However, if charged with an offence other than treason or murder, a wife may still raise actual coercion by her husband as a defense.

This case concerns an application for review of a decision made by the Immigration and Refugee Board, which had determined a family applying for protection, a mother and two minor children, did not have a “well-founded fear of persecution” and were not persons in need of protection. The family expressed fear of domestic violence upon a return to Mexico.

For years, the appellant lived with his civil wife in the same apartment (in Ukraine, the term 'civil marriage' means cohabitation of a man and a woman without official marriage registration). While intoxicated one evening, he began to accuse his wife of cheating on him with other men and degrading his honor and dignity as a man. After a verbal conflict, the man, decided to kill his wife. In order to cause the most severe physical pain, he purposefully poured sulfuric acid from a bottle on his wife and verbally wished for her death, causing serious chemical burns.

The plaintiff sued her ex-husband and asked the court to evict her ex-husband, the defendant-appellant. The plaintiff owned half of the house and the other half of the house belonged to her brother. After the divorce, the defendant-appellant lived in the same house without becoming a joint owner. The defendant-appellant systematically caused moral and physical suffering to the plaintiff and violated the rules of cohabitation.

The appellant was convicted of committing systematic physical and psychological violence against his ex-wife. The eyewitnesses to their fights were minor children. Despite the seriousness of the alleged crime, the first-instance court sentenced the appellant to a three-year restriction of liberty, which means holding a person in an open penal institution (“correctional center”) without isolation from society but under supervision and with compulsory engagement in socially useful paid work under a fixed-term labour contract for a term of one to five years.

The court of first instance decided the divorce of D.B.N. and D.J. on the ground of common fault and placed the minor child in the custody of her father.  D.B.N. appealed the decision to the Isai Tribunal, and the appeal court decided to place the minor child in the custody of D.B.N., her mother considering this to be in the best interest of the minor. It explained that the fact that the parents of D.J. were taking care of the minor did not represent sufficient reason for placing her in his custody, as wrongfully held by the court of first instance.

While she was working at Laidlaw, plaintiff and her five children experienced ongoing domestic violence at the hands of her husband. Plaintiff requested time off to remove herself and her children from the abusive situation, was refused, and was subsequently given paid time off for 15 days, in which she availed of police, legal, and advocacy assistance. Shortly after returning to work, defendant first demoted plaintiff and subsequently terminated plaintiff’s employment stating as a reason falsification of payroll records.

This case held that the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act of 1976 allows the court to issue an injunction against a man to order him out of the home, even in a non-marital joint tenancy.

The House of Lords ruled that in domestic violence cases, no distinction should be made between married and unmarried couples and that the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976 s.1 gave jurisdiction to all county courts to grant an injunction and exclude a violent person from the home, whether married or not, irrespective of any property right vested in the person excluded. However, this exclusion should only be temporary until other arrangements have been made. Such an injunction can be permanent, but will in most cases be temporary.

This decision promoted the systematization of complaints relating to domestic and intra-family violence. It updated the ‘Violence Registration Form’ approved by Decision nº 454 dated April 24, 2007. The form promotes a system of centralized information and, consequently, accurate statistical indicators that will help authorities to better understand and prevent violence against women.