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The post Domestic abuse specialist training and qualifications for professionals appeared first on Women’s Aid.

Ellie Daniel, Head of Policy and Survivor Services, comments:  

“We welcome the proposed amendment to the Crime & Policing bill to treat all suicides where there is a history of domestic abuse as a potential homicide. Too many women who have been subjected to devastating abuse, including coercive and controlling behaviour, by a current or former partner have been denied justice following suicide, because their death was not considered to be directly at the hands of their perpetrator. We owe these women and their grieving families more. More understanding of the insidious nature of domestic abuse, more joined up responses to believe and support women and children; and more justice for those victims who so tragically have their lives taken.” 

The post Women’s Aid responds to Crime & Policing Bill amendment that could see all suicides with a history of domestic abuse treated as homicides appeared first on Women’s Aid.

This week, The Guardian published an investigation which revealed that the number of suicides linked to domestic abuse was being vastly underreported, with up to 1,500 victims each year.

Sarah Davidge, Head of Membership, Research and Evaluation at Women’s Aid, comments:  

Domestic abuse has a devastating impact on the mental health and wellbeing of survivors. These new findings are a shocking insight into the reality for so many families who are left bereaved of mothers, daughters and sisters as a result of domestic abuse, but are too often denied justice because their death was not considered to be directly at the hands of their perpetrator.   

We know from The Domestic Homicide project, that the majority of Suspected Victim Suicides after Domestic Abuse victims (SVSDA) from an intimate partner were also identified as having a history of coercive and controlling behaviour within these relationships. The figures today show that the extent of the official figures significantly underpresent the reality behind the impact of domestic abuse. 

It is imperative that understanding of the nature and impact of coercive and controlling behaviour is improved across all agencies that come into contact with survivors, through training like that offered by Women’s Aid.  

With cases against perpetrators all too often dropped after death by suicide, grieving families are failed by the justice system and perpetrators do not face justice. 

We must do better to protect women and children from their abusers and to help them believe their voices will be heard, before they feel like it is too late.  

The post Women’s Aid responds to an investigation by The Guardian into suicides linked to domestic abuse appeared first on Women’s Aid.

Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, comments:  

“This year marks a decade since coercive and controlling behaviour has been recognised as a crime, and, with the government’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy being published this month, we hope that we will see significant changes over the next decade. 

Coercive control is at the heart of domestic abuse – it is isolating, insidious and confidence-crushing. It makes women feel that they can’t exist outside of their abuser and that everything, including contact with friends and family has to be approved by the abuser. Despite it being a recognised as a crime for a decade, the conviction rates remain stubbornly low, meaning that those responsible can continue this abhorrent crime with impunity. As the government commits to eradicating VAWG, I am hopeful that in the next decade, we will see greater awareness of coercive control, leading to more convictions for this abhorrent crime, as well as greater awareness of it amongst children and young people. It is only by ensuring that young people recognise coercive control and how damaging it is, that we can work towards a world which has no place for it. 

As we work towards creating a society which no longer tolerates domestic abuse, it is vital that those working in the criminal justice system receive training on coercive control, to better understand how dangerous and damaging this behaviour is. It is vital that those working on holding criminals accountable understand what coercive control is, how to recognise it and how to secure convictions for it.”

Natalie Curtis, Survivor Ambassador for Women’s Aid, said:  

“Coercive control is devastating – it leaves survivors feeling ashamed, embarrassed, frightened and unsure. It takes over their whole life. As a survivor, I know these feelings first hand. I fled my abuser and reported the abuse to the police in 2018 and I remember the fear I felt and how difficult it was to live my normal, day-to-day life.  

A decade on, some positive changes have taken place – there is greater awareness and the government has committed to halving violence against women and girls (VAWG), in the next decade, with a strong focus on improving children and young people’s understanding of healthy relationships. Despite this, conviction rates for coercive control remain stubbornly low. For years now, I, along with Women’s Aid, have been calling on better training for all those working in the criminal justice system – the insidious nature of coercive control must be understood and its impact on survivors cannot be underestimated. Only when taken seriously can we hope to improve conviction rates and make sure women are safe from this awful crime.” 

The post Criminalisation of coercive control reaches 10-year anniversary appeared first on Women’s Aid.

Isabelle Younane, head of external affairs at Women’s Aid, comments:  

“Today’s news that serial rapist and former police officer, David Carrick, has also been found guilty of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl and a former partner, as well as coercive and controlling behaviour, will further damage the trust and confidence that women have in policing.  

“We know from our work with survivors, that women experiencing violence and abuse from a police perpetrator are that much more reluctant to come forward – more must be done to ensure that these crimes are investigated properly and perpetrators are held to account, if this trust is to ever be rebuilt.  

“We urgently need comprehensive changes to vetting, recruitment, misconduct and standards processes within forces to have confidence that they are tackling police perpetrators effectively. We also need the government to hold forces accountable for delivering the urgent reforms to vetting and recruitment called for within the Angiolini Inquiry to ensure that survivors can trust the culture and integrity of policing”. 

The post Women’s Aid responds to ex-Met officer being found guilty of more sex offences appeared first on Women’s Aid.

Sarah Davidge, Head of Research and Evaluation at Women’s Aid, said:  

“This is a poignant year for crime data as it relates to domestic abuse and wider violence against women and girls (VAWG), as the Government is working towards its pledge of halving VAWG over the next decade, and is due to announce its new VAWG strategy this autumn. 

“Today the ONS has released a new combined measure of the prevalence of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The development of this measure provides a snapshot of overall victimisation in crimes heavily experienced by women and girls. It is clearly a step toward a more comprehensive overview of these crimes and reflects the government’s commitment to ending VAWG.

“Although prevalence measures such as these can enable us to better identify the overall proportion of victims, they do not consider the number of times each person was victimised. We know that women encounter higher rates of repeat victimisation, are more likely to be subject to coercive and controlling behaviour and be seriously harmed or killed than male victims. Therefore, prevalence measures can underestimate the gender asymmetry of these crimes.

“It is also important to recognise that aggregating these different experiences of VAWG risks obscuring the full impact of these crimes on women. When presented as a single percentage, the unique prevalence, severity, and patterns of abuse—particularly those disproportionately affecting women—can become less visible. We are concerned that the way in which the questions were asked for the new measure could mask a higher proportion of female victims who experience both domestic abuse and non-domestic abuse related crimes.

“Women’s Aid has been part of a project led by University of Bristol over the past few years to redevelop the questions on domestic abuse in the CSEW, data from these questions will be published in the autumn. The figures released today should be read alongside these abuse profiles, to give a more accurate picture of this awful crime and how it affects women and children.”

The post Women’s Aid responds to the Office for National Statistics’ Crime Survey data on domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking  appeared first on Women’s Aid.

The post Nineteen More Child Homicides appeared first on Women’s Aid.

The post Survivors’ stories appeared first on Women’s Aid.

Women’s Aid said:

“We are pleased that this year the Office for National Statistics will be including a new set of domestic abuse questions in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). We have supported the redevelopment of these questions, in partnership with the University of Bristol, Respect and the College of Policing, and in consultation with diverse survivors and key stakeholders, including Imkaan. The CSEW provides critical data on domestic abuse. It does not rely on victim-survivors reporting domestic abuse to the police, instead estimates are generated from a general survey of people aged 16 and over resident in households in England and Wales every year. The CSEW has always been at the cutting edge of survey development, however Women’s Aid has for many years been concerned that the questions in the survey have failed to adequately capture the lived experience of victim-survivors of domestic abuse, including failing to capture the continuous nature of abuse, the context in which the abuse occurs and the impacts of the abuse. As a result, the questions did not adequately capture coercive and controlling behaviour, and the results were likely to underestimate the gender asymmetry of domestic abuse.

The new questions will provide an updated headline prevalence estimate of the number of people experiencing domestic abuse in the past year. In addition, the new questions will also provide insight into victim-survivors’ experiences of domestic abuse since the age of 16, including detailed profiles of which victim-survivors are experiencing the highest impact and highest harm forms of abuse. Whilst the headline measure will better capture some experiences of abuse, it will be based on the experience of particular behaviours, without situating these experiences within the context and impact of the behaviour.

It is therefore essential that the headline measure be read together with the detailed abuse profiles, which will provide insight into who is doing what to whom. Extensive research has demonstrated that women are not only more likely to experience domestic abuse, but more likely to be subject to coercive control, repeat victimisation and be seriously harmed or killed, through abuse that is primarily perpetrated by men. In addition, it is particularly important to understand that men do not experience domestic abuse as part of embedded, structural inequalities against their sex. For women, however, domestic abuse is deeply rooted in inequalities between women and men. It is also important to consider how other forms of inequality intersect with sex inequality to affect a woman’s experiences of domestic abuse. Structural inequalities also cause the barriers and discrimination often faced in accessing support and justice by Black and minoritised victim survivors, LGBT+ victim survivors, D/deaf and disabled victim-survivors and older and teen victim-survivors. Structural inequalities are manipulated by perpetrators, as they strive for power and control. By understanding not only prevalence but impact, and how this is affecting different groups of the population, we will be able to identify to what extent policies and practice are either reducing or exacerbating experiences of domestic abuse, and in particular for whom, so that we can develop targeted and meaningful interventions.

We urge on-going caution in over-reliance on single national datasets, noting that the Crime Survey will still underestimate prevalence of Violence Against Women and Girls and that this is disproportionately the case for Black and minoritised women due to the structural inequalities that they experience, and emphasise the importance of a holistic approach to measuring progress to ending VAWG.

We also welcome the ONS’s work on developing improved statistics on the experiences of domestic abuse of children and young people, and look forward to working together to ensure that the experiences of all victim-survivors are represented in the data.”

The post Women’s Aid respond to updated Crime Survey for England and Wales questions from the Office of National Statistics appeared first on Women’s Aid.

Sophie Francis-Cansfield, Head of Policy at Women’s Aid, said:

“Women’s Aid is concerned that the Assisted Dying Bill, a Private Members Bill currently being debated in Parliament, lacks effective safeguarding of domestic abuse survivors and fear that survivors may be coerced by their perpetrator into ending their own life if these are not improved.

Coercive and controlling behaviour, which is designed to make a person dependent on their perpetrator by isolating them from support, exploiting them, and depriving them from independence, is at the heart of domestic abuse. This form of abuse is closely linked to domestic homicide and suicide in the context of domestic abuse, meaning that there are real risks that without effective safeguards in place, the Assisted Dying Bill could leave survivors in an extremely vulnerable position. This is particularly the case for older survivors and disabled survivors, who may have to depend on their perpetrator as their care giver or who, after years of abuse destroying their self-worth, may feel like the word is a better place without them.

It is important to recognise that disabled people are more likely to experience domestic abuse and coercive control, and that measures need to be in place to protect them. Disabled survivors and those with terminal illnesses can experience medical coercion, which may involve being pressured into signing DNRs or feeling that they must refuse treatments. Women’s Aid agrees with concerns raised by Stay Safe East over the insufficient safeguards in the Bill to prevent perpetrators from making convincing cases for end of life, in the guise of ‘carer’, especially in instances where the survivor is unable to speak, make proper judgement, or have learning difficulties.

We support the positions, and work of, Centre for Women’s Justice and Stay Say East in relation to this Bill.  It’s current drafting, there have not been sufficient measures taken to prohibit abuse and to ensure the protection of survivors.”

The post Women’s Aid highlight the impact of the Assisted Dying Bill on those experiencing domestic abuse appeared first on Women’s Aid.