The revelation that four in 10 of those arrested for last summer’s UK riots had been reported for prior domestic abuse was useful but hardly surprising. Useful in drawing an indisputable link between public violent disorder and domestic violence. Not at all surprising in that people who try to set fire to human beings in buildings while roaring “burn it down” are unlikely to be paragons of domestic harmony back home.
This is well-documented territory. Among the rioters arrested at the US Capitol in January 2021, NPR identified dozens of defendants with prior convictions or pending charges for crimes including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking.
Among prominent Capitol rioters included in Donald Trump’s blanket pardon was Peter Schwartz who had 38 prior convictions including domestic assault. A 2020 charge against Schwartz of assaulting his wife included details of biting her forehead and punching her multiple times. Another is serving 19 years for raping a seven-year-old child.
Though societies are taking a while to work it out, domestic violence is not just a private assault on intimate partners and children. It serves as a red flag for potential violence in the public space from crime to war and terrorism.
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This is why the jubilant New York street scenes with much spraying of baby oil following the verdicts in the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial were among the most depressing features of the case. They were claiming exoneration following his acquittal of racketeering and sex trafficking, though he was found guilty of “transportation to engage in prostitution”.
More than that, they knew precisely what his own defence team had conceded in court; that Combs was a violent domestic abuser. “We own the domestic violence. We own it. I hope you guys know this,” his lawyer Marc Agnifilo told the jury in a perverse case of humblebrag. They had to own it. There was video evidence of Combs knocking his girlfriend to the ground and kicking her where she lay.
Afterwards Agnifilo declared: “It’s a great victory for Sean Combs; it’s a great victory for the jury system.”
Here was a top-flight lawyer, who rather than fade out with a semblance of humility and dignity, chose bullish triumphalism and half-truths to celebrate a domestic abuser.
When asked if he might pardon Combs, Trump replied: “Well, he was essentially, I guess, sort of half innocent. Probably, you know I was friendly with him. I got along with him very well ...”
For those of us not in the megarich politician/lawyer/celebrity bracket, it’s a simple equation: people who want to persuade themselves that the accusers of Combs or Trump or Conor McGregor – the wannabe president who tweeted during the Dublin riots: “Do not let any Irish property be took over unannounced. Evaporate said property. It’s a war” – are gold-diggers and liars and may carry on with the non-conflicted fandom.
But refusing to see the links between attacks on women and children and the wider eruptions in society amount to reckless denial of a kind that rebounds on society at large.
Women’s Aid received the highest number of disclosures of domestic violence and abuse in its 50-year history last year.
In the past week or so, Irish headlines have served up some potent reminders of what such intimate violence looks like:
Ian Rutledge who murdered his wife Vanessa Whyte and their two children Sara and James in Maguiresbridge, Fermanagh, had tried to strangle her a week before the shootings, according to a Sunday Life article published on the Belfast Telegraph’s website. He had a legally-held shotgun.
A woman who was raped and choked by her partner Christopher Ryan while he told her, “I will f**k you up once you pass out”, told the Central Criminal Court that she would “never trust again”.
A 21 year old called Jack Cummins was sentenced to six years in prison for organising a four-man assault on a then-17 year old girl, which left her permanently blind in one eye. Alanna Quinn Idris said she had been harassed for years.
A man who told his wife she should remain inside the home, restricted her food, limited the heating and had a security system with cameras that fed back to an app on his phone was given a suspended sentence for coercive control and assault.
A 24-year-old carpet fitter John Hoey pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to his pregnant partner after accusing her of cheating. He pushed her head under the water while she was having a bath, threatened her with a knife and grabbed her by the throat causing her to pass out.
Pedro Cifali tracked and followed his former partner’s car around Dublin while he disguised himself before attempting to murder her by stabbing her in the neck, back and abdomen. Lucia Nezbalove survived only because a doctor nearby heard her screams and kept her alive.
A man attacked his partner, dragged her by the hair, punched and kicked her before she ran into her child’s bedroom, where he followed her with a knife, attempted to slit her throat and sliced her cheek before stabbing her twice near-fatally in the chest before attempting to stab his stepdaughter. He has not accepted the jury verdicts.
A 28-year-old father of three was jailed for 18 months for asking a mother on Snapchat if he could have sex with – or “feek” as he put it – her two-year-old daughter.
“Domestic” violence may be the most stupidly damaging misnomer of the era. It’s time to start drawing the connection in our own society too.
The 24/7 freephone helpline for Women’s Aid is 1800 341 900. There is an instant-messaging service on womensaid.ie
SafeIreland.ie lists 37 domestic abuse services across Ireland
