There is something eerily strange that happens when you start working in the area of domestic violence. Even without having personal experience of a controlling boyfriend or partner buried in your past, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up at the realisation that, one after the next, women who have experienced different severities of abuse, and who have never met each other before, will describe the same predictable behaviours by their abusive partners in their disclosures, down to the same exact threats.

Put a group of survivors in a room and soon enough they will all recognise the repeated patterns of abuse, the system of it, the trajectory of escalation as time passes and how violence moves on a continuum until someone is killed.

This is not a phenomenon that happens in Malta alone; it is the same the world over. There is obviously a science to it, and it isn’t that difficult to see who wields power and control over whom in a relationship once you understand coercive control.

Chantelle Chetcuti’s murder has left us all reeling (again) and asking (again) how this could have been prevented. To answer this question, one should work backwards. With 137 women killed daily by partners and close family members around the world, this hasn’t been difficult for researchers and experts to do.

Domestic Homicide Reviews, mountains of empirical research and criminal profiling have shed light on identifying risks that lead to femicide. Several risk assessment tools are used throughout the world, with the DASH Risk Assessment tool being widely used in the UK.

The tool, when used by trained individuals, is quite literally lifesaving. It is designed to kick-start a process of risk management prioritising the preservation of life. This includes precautionary protection measures, MARACs (Multi-agency Risk Assessment Conferences) between service providers, and barring orders because, quite frankly, the modern world still believes that a person’s life is worth quite a bit more than an abuser’s temporary discomfort.

Every time our country is rocked by yet another femicide, the same question comes up: had she reported him in the past? If we disregarded the not-so-subtle attempt to blame the victim for her own demise, it shows that reporting a perpetrator is expected to contribute to protection and preservation of life.

Rightly so, because if it were your daughter or your sister whom you were burying, you too would demand to know why the state has not done all it could to protect and preserve her life before it was violently snatched away by another wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Articles published recently about the “unfairness” of the new law are riddled with inaccuracies, misinformation and misogyny. The truth is that victims of domestic violence, who are disproportionately women, find countless obstacles to reporting.

Research (and not opinion) shows that, in actual practice, the system is quite victim-unfriendly and that it often means a victim is re-traumatised during the long processes. Courts take too long to reach decisions and, for years, perpetrators pull every trick in the book, using the courts themselves to continue to make their lives difficult, painful and unbearable, steamrolling over the interests of their own children.

A person’s life is worth quite a bit more than an abuser’s temporary discomfort

Victims face a system that is run by people who are the fruits of a sexist and patriarchal socialisation process – one that presumes that women are probably lying or cheating, that they provoke the violence lain upon them and that women should just put up and shut up like our grandmothers did.

We are all immersed in this belief system and thinking process, and we are all guilty of upholding and condoning it, even without realising. Many are loath to holding perpetrators accountable for their actions.

Instead, justifications and rationalisations are made: ‘He lost his temper’ or ‘she pushed him over the edge’. The media often highlights the perpetrator’s work-related achievements which are completely unrelated to the case, as if to say that a regular or well-liked man cannot possibly beat, terrorise, threaten or even kill a woman.

This is why tools like the DASH Risk Assessment and Temporary Protection Orders are so important, because if perpetrators went around with flashing signs on their backs, we wouldn’t have so many women broken, stabbed, slashed, thrown off cliffs or burned to death. Truly, something is wrong, and it obviously isn’t “victims abusing the system”!

So, who in their right mind would want to dial-down measures that are in place to safeguard victims against further serious harm and loss of life? And at what cost?

Victims rarely leave the courtroom feeling like justice has been done. Most leave feeling more confused, broken and afraid. They remain at risk and are forced to hide in shelters, change the locks on their doors and look over their shoulders all the time. We all know them. They are our sisters, our mothers, daughters, our friends and colleagues.

So, if we’re truly serious about preventing another femicide, we all need to listen more closely to those who work on the ground with hundreds of victims and perpetrators.

We call on the state to keep its promise to work closely with us grassroots NGOs on the review of the temporary protection order and we encourage a review on the processes and the sentences being meted out at court because, just like Chantelle’s, every single victim’s life is a life worth saving.

Elaine Compagno is a manager at St Jeanne Antide Foundation.

soar@antidemalta.org