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Yes to radical change after police failures

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radical proactive chagne needed on domestic abuse; education and resourcesTackling domestic abuse: education is paramount and resources are vital.

A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) recently said that the police are failing domestic abuse victims; they are not tackling domestic abuse effectively, and the Home Secretary, Theresa May, said she is going to chair a new group to look at ‘radical change’.

Theresa May, when you chair this group, please remember one thing: domestic abuse is society’s issue.

It belongs to us all.

Blaming the police for not protecting victims doesn’t help and it focuses the attention on one group without considering other outside factors.

Police forces are dealing with a 20 per cent reduction in their budgets and do not have the resources to deal effectively with the number of cases that come to their door each day. This reduction certainly is not going to help them ‘tackle domestic abuse effectively’.

Like with so many key issues in the UK, the government is trying to ‘tackle problems’ without resourcing them properly.

In the UK one person rings the police every minute regarding domestic abuse. One woman is killed every 3 days.

These statistics have not changed since statistics began on domestic abuse.

A radical change is certainly needed.

However, the problem isn’t down to one person or organisation.

The media like to link into a story and blame someone, but this is dangerous territory for victims of domestic abuse.

We all need to be involved in tacking domestic abuse. Education is paramount and resources are vital.

Domestic abuse can be said to happen for all kinds of reasons – poverty, mental health, illness, drink, drugs – and apparently even the weather and sporting results can be seen to contribute.

However, the reason behind domestic abuse is solely behaviour. Controlling behaviour. And our behaviour patterns are determined quickly, from the minute we’re born.

I am constantly amazed at the attempt of programmes to try and change the behaviour of adults, particularly so called ‘perpetrator programmes’.

They may have their place, but I am and always have been frustrated at the lack of work done with young children and young people to tackle domestic abuse.

During my years at Women’s Aid we worked tirelessly to get some funding so that we could work in secondary schools. We were often successful and managed to work with older pupils about safe relationships.

The results were often astonishing.

Boys would often say that they thought it was perfectly reasonable to monitor their girlfriend’s telephone calls and I remember clearly one being open enough to say he would hit his girlfriend if he caught her kissing someone else.

Girls also felt that girls deserved to be shouted at for ‘flirting’ and that it was their own fault if they made their boyfriends jealous.

There we were at schools, talking to 15 year-olds – those who would turn their iPods off – trying to show them what a safe relationship was, what a healthy relationship was.

We also talked to them about their life at home, about domestic abuse in the home, and often there would be a young person hanging around at the end wanting to open up about their home life, most of the time for the first time ever.

The point of the above is that we as volunteers and paid workers of a charity had to beg organisations to give us some money and we then used this money to get into maybe only a couple of schools.

Just to get into a couple of schools.

Some schools wouldn’t let us in; they didn’t think parents would want their children hearing about domestic abuse.

What I want to see is not organisations scrabbling for funding and getting into a few schools to talk to young people who mostly have already made their mind up about what is a safe relationship or not.

I want all schools, firstly primary schools, to have education about what is right and wrong in relationships, appropriately of course but to teach young ones not only about safety but what they should expect from a healthy relationship and what constitutes a bad one.

Why wouldn’t parents want their children to learn about having a healthy relationship? What is there to be scared about?

Why, more importantly, won’t the government fund these services so that experts can provide a preventative service around domestic abuse instead of a reactive one?

Funding for organisations such as Women’s Aid has been depleted massively over the years, women with vast experience and passion find themselves out of a job, charitable organisations fight over funding and the government is refusing to fund core services.

It makes so much sense to utilise these experts and fund them to provide preventative work. Doesn’t it?

Without preventative work and on-going support from domestic abuse organisations society will not change.

Without education and resources in schools, attitudes can’t change.

We have to stop trying the same old tactics; increasing training for the police on how to handle the woman who has been abducted and assaulted by her partner isn’t going to stop domestic abuse.

We’re not just failing domestic abuse victims by not responding to their calls for help; we’re failing domestic abuse victims from the minute they’re born.

Theresa May, be radical please. Also be proactive. Not reactive.

  1. Having worked with perpetrators of domestic abuse, I strongly believe that we do need the police to react differently. Focusing training and change here would send the right message to the rest of society that domestic abuse is not acceptable. If the police are properly trained in how to deal with victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse, victims would be more inclined to disclose abuse to them. The criminal justice system needs better training too, and they need to impose the right sanctions to give the right messages to society. Once this starts to happen, I think society will then start to react differently to domestic abuse. Young people will start to recognise it’s not acceptable and society in general will respond differently. Radical change is most definitely needed – why not start with those that have the power to make a difference to how perpetrators are sanctioned? I do however believe there needs to be a joined up approach and more willingness is needed from education providers to accept that domestic abuse is an issue that young people should be made aware of.

  2. Great article. Yes this has been an ongoing problem. I would like to see a a major investigation in attitudes amongst police and those that work in the legal system. I suspect that we would find, horror of horrors, that they are institutionally sexist and aggressive and this needs addressing as they have begun to address racism. I also think that the media has a lot to answer for of course.

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