Beaten wives betrayed

Last year 250000 applications were made for preliminary protection orders and only one in three was granted.

South Africa, women's rights activists point out, has some of the most progressive domestic violence laws in the world, but has a problem when it comes to implementing them.

Police are not serving orders and victims are dropping cases because of fear of intimidation.

According to the Department of Justice's annual report for 2012- 2013, there were 246609 applications for protection orders.

This resulted in 151423 interim orders being granted. Of those, only 88930 were finalised.

The number of arrests made related to these applications totalled 34419.

"We have a progressive piece of legislation that protects and supports the victim, but the problem is that we don't have the strength and cooperation of the likes of the police and victim support units," said Professor Lillian Artz of the University of Cape Town's gender health and justice research unit.

Lisa Vetten, who is at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, said: "You get situations where police do not have petrol to get there to serve the orders, or the orders are delivered a couple of days late."

Vetten added that there were instances in which victims had not been able to get access to the courts after hours.

But it is not all the fault of the state. Research done in Western Cape shows that the victims themselves are often to blame for not following through the process of obtaining a protection order.

"Sometimes just the act of applying for a protection order is enough to stop domestic abuse," explained Artz.

In other instances victims would drop out of the process because of intimidation from spouses.

Artz hopes that the unit's research will create a better understanding of what victims of domestic abuse go through, and what measures could be put in place to better help them.

But, according to the Department of Justice annual report, many advances have been made with regard to combating domestic abuse.

The number of interim protection orders granted increased by 34%, while there was an increase of 40% in the number of warrants of arrest issued in relation to protection orders.