Suicide of Victim of Abuse

Suicide of Victim of Abuse
Date: 29/04/2005
To: independent.letters@unison.independent.ie

Sir,
I refer to the article by Ben Quinn in your newspaper to day.

The Alliance Victim Support group very much regret the death of Mr Anthone Delaney this week in Dublin.

It has been Alliance policy through the years to safeguard against a policy of Dependency when dealing with very vulnerable people. We want to encourage everybody to use the mainstream Statutory bodies for all aspects of social assistance rather than segregate us again from these advantages that the general public enjoy.

For those of us in support of people like Anthony, we have a duty of care that must be about intregrating and moving on rather than becoming dependent again on re-established structures such as drop in centres and education centres which group together victims as they were before.

While counselling will help, other factors can also be beneficial. We would wish to focus on these aspects of support rather than on centres which can become a magnet for many who are still looking to move forward. That's where we as Group leaders have a part to play. Instances such as this are thankfully rare and we must do everything we can to ensure that only the best professionals deal with and treat these vulnerable people.

Tom Hayes