Padayachee Venessa

Ms Venessa Padayachee is currently employed by the Head office of NICRO in South Africa, as the Manager: Research and Programme Design. She has been with NICRO for over 13 years. Her academic background includes a BA(Social work) Honors Degree through (University of Durban-Westville, now UKZN); National Higher Diploma in Human Resources Management (UNISA); and is currently completing a Masters in Social Science in Criminology (UCT).

Her areas of specialization are victim support, intimate partner violence, working with perpetrators of intimate partner violence, restorative justice, voluntarism and offender rehabilitation and reintegration programmes and strategies. She has presented extensively on these topics at both national and international conferences, and some of her work is published in national and international journals and books.

For the past 10 years Ms Padayachee has been guiding the organization around its work with perpetrators and victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). She initially lead the organization to pursue developing programmes for perpetrators of intimate partner violence in 2000. Her extensive knowledge and expertise around IPV and working with perpetrators of IPV is based on her direct service delivery experience, in programme design, training of NICRO staff, and having visited projects in many parts of the world. She is well networked around this programme internationally, is familiar with contemporary research and practice around work with perpetrators of intimate partner violence, and has presented many papers, run workshops and seminars on this programme to a range of organizations and forums. Ms Padayachee is currently finalising a review and subsequent Toolkit of resources for NICRO staff and clients for ‘NICRO’s Intimate Partner Violence programme.’.

She believes that people who are affected by crime need ‘safe spaces’ where they can be provided with opportunities to heal, to reflect on the impact of crime and how it has affected their lives, to identify the root causes of crime, take responsibility for perpetration of crimes, and make full use of opportunities to change offending behaviour and find restorative solutions to repair the harm.