Family of Change praises police aid in violence cases

National

AN advocate for violence against women in East Sepik has commended the police for their work in assisting them to sort gender and family violence issues in the communities.
Veronica Simogun, the director for Family of Change, an advocacy group in Wewak, said they had good working relationship with police when it came to solving gender-based and sorcery-related issues.
“Almost all of our victims’ cases referred to police have been successful so far,” she said.
Simogun said when gender-based violence cases were reported to police, they referred them to the Family for Change to help deal with the cases.
“The manner in which we address this issue is we type out letters because we know that women are less educated than men.”
Simogun said most women faced with a GBV case, did not have confidence, having lived with low self-esteem in the society.
“So we help them to type out their letter and state basically the cases that they have presented to our office and then we send their case with the letter to the police.,” he said.
She said that if the victims went to them with bruises and required medical attention and further court attention, they also wrote letters for them to the respective organisations that they were referred to, like the hospital and village court.
“To the police, we have seen that they have assisted the clients so well because the client do not have to talk to them. They will only ask the client basic questions after reading the statement that we helped to write.