Derek Byrne sat down with Trinity News to discuss the intimate partner violence prevention programme for the LGBTQ+ community which will be rolled out at Trinity College Dublin from September.
Having been heavily involved in the gay community over the last 40 years, Bryne is most known for his journalism and broadcasting, where he specialises in LGBTQ+ issues. “I’ve been writing in the opinion section of the Irish Times since 2014”, he said, noting how his naivety blinded him to the greater “level of the platform…and the attention you get from that.”
“I was not expecting that at all,” he said. His work has at times been construed as contentious: “My infamous marriage equality article in 2014 and my PrEP [Pre Exposure Prophylaxis] article, I think in 2017, won me the accolade of being the most hated gay in the village.”
“I’ll never forget my first piece on marriage equality in 2014 and getting a phone call at seven o’clock in the morning from a friend of mine who said, have you seen the Irish Times?” Byrne continued: “I went online and saw that my editor, in her wisdom, had put the headline ‘Derek Byrne: why marriage won’t work for gay lifestyles’. I nearly had a heart attack,” he remembered. “But there was nothing I could do, I had to own it, you know, and I had to put up with the consequences and it was very, very hard.”
“My community … turned on me and that was very hard to take”
“Fundamentally,” Byrne said, “my community, the people that I knew all that time turned on me and that was very hard to take.” Byrne recalls meeting friends in a bar the day after the article was published: “I walked into PantiBar. People saw me, everyone turned their back on me, everyone.”
While his efforts to strike up conversation regarding same-sex marriage have continually been misconstrued, Byrne has been able to successfully harness the publicity the backlash awarded him: “I think the work I’m doing at the moment is going a long way in terms of rebuilding trust within my community.”
For the past two years Bryne has been working with Mens Aid as Ireland’s first LGBTQ+ domestic violence education officer. Since then, Mens Aid, for Byrne, has gone on to develop “a comprehensive education programme, which explores the factors of domestic violence from a man’s point of view, but then looks at the specific and unique factors of domestic violence from an LGBT perspective.”
Upon his appointment, Byrne met with members of community organisations such as The Switchboard, LGBT Ireland, Belong Too and Out House: “And what I found”, he said, “was that now and again this was an issue that was raising its head but nobody was really doing much about it.” Consequently, “I simply invited all those organisations to a meeting on July 22 that year, to just sit around and say, look, we need to form some sort of network so that we can share information and share resources so ultimately, we can support members of our community who are victims of domestic violence.”
His quest for a unified approach towards intimate partner violence in LGBTQ+ relationships has been, from his point of view, extremely successful, observing that “there’s been almost an explosion of awareness” on the issue. Today, Byrne’s work takes him all across the country: “it’s been incredible the response not only in Dublin but nationally”.
Bryne’s work is now taking him to College. Working alongside LGBTQ+ staff network, Byrne will oversee the roll out of an intimate partner violence prevention programme for the LGBTQ+ community in College in the upcoming term. “We’re going to be coming in working with freshers to look at issues of consent for example, but also just to really raise awareness of how young students coming to Dublin or coming to university for the first time can be very vulnerable”.
“Sexual violence … is not just about force”
The presentation will also explore “where your own red lines are as a person in terms of what are you prepared to accept and say no to sexually.” As he asserted, “really, it’s just about people being aware that sexual violence, for example, is not just about force.” He also cautioned that “sexual violence can be verbal, as we know it can be sharing images.”
The importance of establishing one’s own boundaries is a repeating motif from Byrne. As he emphasised, solid boundaries ensure that “you’re always comfortable about what activity, particularly sexual activity you engage in, and that you always consented to it and that you don’t feel ashamed of it.”
Bryne also went on to discuss the role drugs and alcohol can play when coming to college, saying how there is an air of “freedom” and “hedonistic kind of expectation”. He affirmed that “Of course, everybody should have a great time and nobody’s casting judgement or anything, but it’s really about making informed decisions and having a think yourself, what’s comfortable for me and what’s not comfortable for me.”
Byrne alongside Graham Ryall of the Rialto Community Drug Team has developed a half day seminar which deals with the issue of Chem Sex within the LGBTQ+ community. The seminar is in the process of being rolled out to local and regional drugs task forces. “The Garda National Protection Units are working with us now to roll this out to the domestic violence units, first of all in Dublin, and hopefully around the country,” Byrne said. However, “the problem is there’s no detox for or treatment for crystal meth for example. And there’s very little in relation to GBL and GHB. So we have a long way to go in terms of supporting men who are engaged in this activity. But at least we started and we’re on that road.”
When it comes to recognising the signs of intimate partner violence in gay and bisexual relationships Bryne also acknowledged that “we see the same forms of violence that women would see as well.” This can range from emotional and psychological violence, physical violence, sexual violence, to financial violence among older people, coercive control, gaslighting and second wave abuse.
“What perpetrators are very good at doing particularly in terms of locking people into a cycle of abuse is they will turn the blame on the victim and the victim begins to feel that it’s all their fault.”
Disagreements in relationships happen, so how can one distinguish between an abusive relationship and an ordinary relationship with rows? “When you feel that you are changing your behaviour, and you feel like you are walking on eggshells around someone, that is when the red flags or the red lights should start flashing,” said Bryne. “We see a whole range of things and what we do at Mens Aid is we provide information.”
Along with providing information, Mens Aid offers counselling services and peer support for men along with assistance for men who are undergoing separation or barring orders. While Mens Aid does not recruit volunteers, people can invite Byne in for workshops in order to help, in his words, “raise awareness of the issue of male domestic violence and domestic violence in an LGBT context.”
“Ultimately, everything we do is about supporting victims of domestic violence, everything”
Yet, for Byrne, awareness of these topics must be rooted in understanding: “We need people to understand what domestic violence is what sexual violence is, we need people to understand what those things are, to be able to recognize them so that they can respond … Ultimately, everything we do is about supporting victims of domestic violence, everything,” Byrne concluded.
Mens Aid can be contacted confidentially via their national support line at 01-5543811 which operates Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm. Alternatively confidential email support is available at [email protected].
