Domestic Abuse: Victims and Survivors

Baroness Hazarika Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hazarika (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, for securing this important debate and for such an eloquent, powerful and well-researched opening speech. Domestic abuse is a stain on our society; it not only kills women but scars their children and perpetuates a cycle of pain and violence. We have all been heartbroken by the case of Sara Sharif, which we have seen in the past few days. We know this: that violent and controlling men do not just beat women—they often beat their own children.

All of us across the House want to tackle this issue, and I, too, pay tribute to the many brilliant women’s organisations in the sector. I pay tribute particularly to Women’s Aid, which has just marked its 50th anniversary. These organisations do excellent work, giving voice to women who often feel that the world and every public institution has failed them. They listen to these women and, most importantly, they believe them—women like Claire Throssell MBE. Claire had a violent partner. She told the court that her ex-husband was capable of hurting her children. He told her that he would, to punish her, and in 2014, during an unsupervised contact visit, he killed her sons, Paul and Jack. In her own words:

“It took just 15 minutes for my life to end and my existence to begin”.


That did not need to happen, and so many of the relentless tragedies that we shed a tear over do not need to happen if we listen to victims and we listen to women like Claire.

I hope that this new Government will listen to the victims. They have got off to a good start, and there are many good champions within the Government, particularly the honourable Jess Phillips, MP. But we need a system that is designed for victims, particularly women and children. At the moment, it feels like the whole system—from the family courts to the police, the criminal justice system and the Child Maintenance Service—exists to grind women down and exhaust them with all the bureaucracy and expense, and to punish them again and again.

Many people think that it is all over for a woman when the immediate violence stops and she leaves her partner, but that can often be just the beginning of a nightmare journey, trying to survive economic abuse and coercive control, with the ex-partner using the family court system against her and accusing her of all sorts. The emotional, psychological and financial abuse can carry on long after those initial bruises fade. We must listen to women and work with organisations such as Women’s Aid and Surviving Economic Abuse.

Finally, I ask my noble friend the Minister: will he consider recognising domestic abuse as the national emergency that it is?