Domestic Violence (Police Response)

Debate between Mike Freer and Tim Loughton

Thursday 10th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

Again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right, because we look at this issue as primarily about getting the victim out of harm’s way and into a place of safety—that is clearly the biggest priority—as well as the children. However, that situation may pertain for some time, and children need stability. They need continuity in their education and access to other people and friends around them. We therefore need to ensure that there is some long-term planning so that the children can still access all the services and facilities that they need as children growing up, but in safety. There are complications with that, but again, early intervention involving housing services, police, social workers and specialist domestic violence people and charities can make the process easier, rather than it just being a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.

I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) about psychological violence, because the issue is not just bruises and broken bones, although they are easier to see. As important in many cases but much less easy to see are the effects of the psychological violence of a controlling person—coercive control, as my hon. Friend puts it. We need to be better at detecting that. That means better psychological training for some of our social workers and more specialist domestic violence social workers who are able to bring in all the different aspects of the issue, as I have said.

There is also, of course, the question of what we do about sexual violence. We have talked about physical violence. I have just mentioned psychological violence. There is a worrying and growing trend of sexual violence. In this Chamber earlier this week, we had a very interesting debate about the pornification of the young and the influence that violent pornography in particular is having on impressionable young children. I remember a particularly appalling case on “Woman’s Hour” in which a 15-year-old girl had been forced to watch violently pornographic films, videos, by her boyfriend and then to re-enact the sex that had been portrayed in them. That was seen as normal by the boy, but when the girl was asked, “Why didn’t you just tell him where to go?”, her response was, “Well, I didn’t think I had the right to say no.” Again, that was a very depressing response. We need to ensure that our girls in particular have the confidence and the know-how to be able to say no and mean no, and that our young boys do not normalise pornographic violence and unacceptable hard-core sex as what growing up is all about. That goes back to the education process as well.

[Mike Freer]

In terms of helping to stem domestic violence from a very early age, does my hon. Friend agree that our education system needs to be teaching the importance of express consent in our schools, rather than just this implicit “You have to say no”? Boys need to be taught that express consent is required.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is right. I alluded to that in relation to respect for relationships and what that means. It needs to be learned by boys and it needs to be learned by girls. We are talking about another aspect of the cancer that is domestic violence that needs to be spotted early. We need to protect the victims, but we also need to ensure that we can protect the children against the long-term and highly damaging consequences of being in a home afflicted by domestic violence.