Crime: Domestic Violence

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for raising this important issue. I thank the Home Secretary for prioritising it, for commissioning the HMIC review that looked into the police response to domestic violence, and indeed for acting on it by chairing the new national oversight group.

Domestic violence is a real concern. It affects so many of us. On average, the police are contacted every 30 seconds for assistance with related incidents. In my home county of Essex, for example, I am proud that our PCC, Nick Alston, has identified domestic abuse as a top priority in the Essex police and crime plan, after figures showed that more than 3,600 offences were recorded between April and September last year, including three women killed in their own homes. This equates to 20 such crimes reported in Essex each and every day.

As Mr Alston has said:

“Too often the front line is the front room. We surely can’t accept this level of harm. I want to work across communities to create an environment where domestic abuse is not tolerated and where our children and young people grow up to recognise the value of healthy relationships”.

Essex residents have welcomed the newly constituted Essex Domestic Abuse Strategy Board, chaired by the PCC, which has representation from across all the agencies that have a role to play in tackling domestic abuse, including the police, councils, probation, prosecution authorities and health. This new board is overseeing an ambitious programme of work in supporting victims, tackling perpetrators and, most importantly, working to prevent domestic abuse happening in the first place. I congratulate Mr Alston on this initiative and urge other PCCs to follow the example.

The reality is that the crime is embedded within the perpetrator’s need to exert power and control over their victim. As such, the abuser will often use a combination of psychological abuse, coercive control as well as physical abuse to create real fear in order to contain their victims—as we have heard already in this debate. However, as we have also heard, psychological abuse, coercive control and a pattern of abuse are not criminalised, sometimes allowing perpetrators to evade the law. This puts real pressure on the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other agencies when tackling the issue, as they do not always appear to have the right tools to do so.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, pointed out, in March last year the Home Office changed the definition of domestic violence to include,

“any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive … behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality”.

I thank the Home Secretary and welcome the change as it depicts the fundamental nature of the crime. Currently, the state cannot effectively intervene, nor translate and consequently penalise the crime before the abuse has escalated, leading to current or former partners killing two women every week.

Statistics show that women experience between 30 and 40 incidents before they have the courage to pick up the phone and dial 999. I do not know whether it is declaring an interest, but as corroboration of this statistic, I can tell your Lordships that I have a close relation who was physically and psychologically abused by her husband for nearly 30 years, without any of us being aware, before it was finally brought to the attention of the police and he was prosecuted. According to research, 53% of men whose cases are reported to police in the UK have been reported for at least three other assaults against their partner. However, even if a victim does report, unless there is physical evidence of assault there is little that can be done. As a victim of abuse explained in a Victim’s Voice survey conducted by the Sara Charlton Charitable Foundation:

“Currently it’s too easy for abusers to get away with it because they know that if there is insufficient physical evidence of assault they will not be convicted. In my case, my abuser didn’t feel the need to physically hurt me very often because the emotional and psychological abuse kept me ‘under control’. It transpired that the police knew exactly what he was like, (I was by no means his first victim), but there was mostly no official crime he could be charged with. Consequently, he was pretty much free to behave exactly as he pleased, safe in the knowledge that unless he left visible marks on any of his victims, there was nothing anyone could do”.

We—or should I say the taxpayer?—currently spend £15.7 billion a year on the symptoms of domestic violence, but we should also focus further on its eradication. We need to be able to target perpetrators effectively through our legal system, ensuring that government spending is focused on where it is lacking and creating an effective cross-agency response to this epidemic.

The courts are bound by current laws, which can prosecute only for single incidents of violence. Without being able to see the true pattern of violence and without an offence that is fit for purpose, the courts are unable to ascertain the real threat that the perpetrator’s course of conduct poses to a victim and consequently are unable to impose the appropriate sentences. As another victim in the Victim’s Voice survey wrote:

“Why should we have to suffer in silence? The only way I could finally get away was to arrange everything in secret and be absolutely petrified that he was going to find out before I had everything in place to be able to leave safely. I then had to go into hiding for a while so that there was no risk of backlash. If the law had been there to protect me I would have felt a lot safer and stronger to have been able to leave sooner”.

Thanks to the welcome stalking law reform brought in by the Government, a course of conduct that constitutes psychological abuse and control has been criminalised. However, the law protects those who experience these behaviours only once they have left the relationship. Should this protection now be extended to those who suffer such abuse within the relationship?

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, I am grateful to the domestic violence law reform campaign team, the Sara Charlton Charitable Foundation, Women’s Aid and Paladin for their briefing for this debate and for their continued campaigning for this change. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments and hope that he and the Home Secretary will consider the points made in today’s debate.