This article is from page 12 of the 2008-08-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
A WOMAN who has established herself as the public face of Clare Haven women’s refuge for female victims of domestic abuse is leaving the organisation.
Eileen Murphy has decided to end her association with Clare Haven, having played a key role in its work over the past 10 years. She had taken the decision to take some time out and concentrate on her personal life, in the immediate future.
During the past decade, she was involved in the creation of a Clare Haven refuge (in 2002), while she also played a central role in the es- tablishment of programmes which raised awareness of the existence of domestic abuse in the county.
In 2001, she assumed the role as funding and public relations co-or- dinator with Clare Haven and since then has played an integral role in promoting the work done by the or- ganisation across Clare.
She was particularly proud of her involvement in The Clare 1OK over
the past three years as it involved dozens of small organisations who raised money in a fun way.
‘“T was involved in funding applica- tions, organising various events and fundraisers and was involved in the Clare 10K. That has been a huge suc- cess,” she reflected.
‘Those events were promoting the work that we did,’ added Ms Mur- phy.
Last year, Clare Haven engaged in a sticker campaign, geared towards encouraging victims of domestic abuse to come forward.
The initiative was called “Behind Closed Doors’ and stickers were placed on the backs of doors of pub- lic buildings. She believes this was a huge success and helped victims to come forward.
‘People were always afraid to come forward. Since we did that campaign in November, there has been a huge increase in people coming forward. Before Clare Haven was set up in 1993 there was no help for women. They had to travel to Limerick and Galway. Women are coming forward
much earlier now,” said the Kilkenny ELON Lon
Over the past decade, she has no- ticed a changing trend, in relation to domestic abuse.
“The awareness of domestic vio- lence has increased hugely. It’s not just spouse or partner abuse. There are adults and children abusing mothers now,” she said.
The introduction of outreach cen- tres in Ennistymon, Scariff, Shan- non and Kilrush has also encouraged victims of domestic abuse to come forward and Ms Murphy feels this has had a profound effect.
“Opening these centres has been a huge success story in one sense. In another sense it is terrible that there are sO many victims of abuse out there,” she said.