We are, as we always have been, in the midst of an epidemic of violence against women and girls. This cuts across all communities, affecting everyone. The two-million-or-so victims each year are friends, colleagues, neighbours, family – and us. An estimated 2.3 million perpetrators carry out this abuse. They’re us too.
The safer streets mission to halve violence against women and girls within 10 years is a bold ambition. Like others working in this space, we applaud it. It’s the boldest step yet taken by a UK government. What this will mean for women and girls is transformational. For a nation seeking growth, unlocking safety and capacity for women and girls is game changing.
But what does it take to halve a harm woven into our cultures, families and psychologies? Nothing less than radical action. We know the current system – as much as the fragmented offer can be called that – isn’t capable. Many indicators tell us it’s broken. In the three months in which this CSW edition is current, for example, an estimated 30 women will be killed by men close to them. In the same time period, an estimated 200,000 women will be raped or sexually assaulted.
Radical action requires a radical rethink. The question we pose in this article is: what is to be done about the perpetrators? Specifically, we’re thinking about those fathers, sons, partners, ex-partners and others who domestically abuse, using coercion, violence and other oppressions.
With notable exceptions, including the charities Respect and White Ribbon, there has been little leadership around addressing domestic abuse perpetrators. In the UK, we have 50 years of world-leading practice and research on supporting victims within the independent women’s sector. Yet for reasons which must be better understood, men have never matched this with equal efforts to address perpetration.
This gap in action is evident. We aren’t, for example, good at identifying or preventing perpetration. We don’t have ways for men to self-identify and seek help. We use assessment tools that are demonstrably poor at predicting escalating dangerousness. We offer homogenous services because we haven’t yet disaggregated the spectrum of perpetration. We are still using exceptionalising narratives of a few “bad apples” (see: Wayne Couzens) rather than acknowledging that perpetration is widespread and engrained.
These gaps mean we’ve ended up with the criminal justice system as our de facto response to perpetration. This isn’t working.
Criminal justice is a blunt instrument with a short reach. Its single-incident focus doesn’t deal well with the escalating patterns typical of domestic abuse. It has a high threshold, which many perpetrators can’t provably meet. Those that do, typically do so at a later stage when significant harm has been committed and entrenched behaviours are harder to address. Rightly, domestic abuse is taken seriously within policing. However, this means policing doesn’t use interventions such as conditional discharge for seemingly “lower-level” incidents. This inhibits the police’s ability to act earlier before harm escalates.
Over-reliance on criminal justice responses means we haven’t empowered other agents to act. This leaves a gulf where early action should be. Yet if we designed the system by asking what women and girls want, we’d be focused on earlier action. This would include alternatives for those victims who want the abuse to stop but don’t want to criminalise the perpetrator. Many victims have complicated and beloved relationships with those who are harming them. Many others do not trust the criminal justice system. As professionals working on this agenda, our job is to support victims to be safe in whatever choices they make, including the way they want to see justice and accountability.
The starting point is most obviously to prevent perpetration from occurring. We have good data on the link between early-years experiences and later perpetration. This shows we need to reduce exposure to abuse in childhood. Increasingly, this means countering the harm done in the immersive worlds of online misogyny and sexual bullying. It means disrupting ideas of masculinity that dampen empathy and foster entitlement. All young people should have the chance of knowing what a healthy relationship looks like, and how it feels to have the power to create that. We want all our young boys to have the chance to grow into safe and loving men.
Where abuse has already begun, we need to destigmatise help-seeking. We need to give agency to men and those around them to act early. Radical changes in attitudes around seeking help for mental health and for drug and alcohol use have made accessing support easier. We can learn from this without reducing the stigma of the abuse itself. Research shows that early action can unpick the entitlement, beliefs, behaviours and denial of others’ rights that underpin abuse. By acting earlier, we disrupt the shame and guilt that otherwise cycles into defensiveness and denial, and the self-justification of abuse.
What’s needed are proactive opportunities to intervene early. Research by Sunderland’s Findaway project tells us that two-thirds of people tell family and friends about domestic abuse before they tell a professional. Instinctively, this makes sense. Family and friends know things that agencies can’t. They are trusted in ways agencies aren’t. Wouldn’t it be a step forward for government policy to recognise friends and family at the core of efforts to prevent and act early on perpetration? What would this require?
The potential here is for a community safeguarding approach. One in which government asks communities how it can return power to them. This is an important question. Because the truth about who is preventing and managing perpetration is: it’s the victims themselves. That’s where the weight of the work sits: on victims, in communities. “Bystander” and community champion approaches have modelled this community-level work. If we’re going to take the radical step of halving violence against women and girls, we need to build on the skills, resources and resilience at the heart of this. That’s in women and girls. We need to honour that.
Let’s illustrate this with two examples.
In Rotherham, Apna Haq, the town’s service by and for Black and minoritised victims, just celebrated its 30-year anniversary. It hasn’t received state funding in the 10 years since the Jay Report, despite the report highlighting the importance of engaging directly with women’s groups on gendered abuses. Across its lifetime, Apna Haq has blown the whistle within services and in the community and has been the one constant safe place for survivors to gather and share. When we think about where culture change, accountability and recovery begin, it’s in spaces like Apna Haq, right in the heart of communities.
In 2013, Teesside had the highest rates of domestic abuse in England. Funded by a £30,000 public health grant, My Sister’s Place – a specialist domestic abuse provider in Middlesbrough – took on the 40 most entrenched and dangerous abuse cases that had cycled in and out of services for years. So dangerous were the perpetrators in this cohort, they had over 500 convictions between them, and one committed a double homicide during the pilot. Despite this, by working in tandem with perpetrators and victims, My Sister’s Place created enough space and safety around the victims to enable outcomes worth £1.5m to police and children’s social care over five years. This was achieved within a one-year period, presenting a return on investment of 1:50. And yet, this pilot has never been recommissioned.
This is where the system is at: it can’t even recognise excellence in its midst, let alone unpick its flaws.
This is why the change that is enacted must be radical. Government needs to do more than legislate and preside over under-funding. The issues need to be reconceptualised. “Test, learn, grow” approaches needed to be carried over from the Cabinet Office’s Public Service Reform and Evaluation Unit. And we need a massive upscaling of resources – including a new understanding of the efficacy of current resources, and new money.
There is much to be hopeful for. The ambition is the right one. But is the safer streets mission prepared to be radical? That’s the final question.
Becky Rogerson MBE has over 20 years’ experience as a chief executive in the third sector designing and delivering services for victims and perpetrators, and 10 years as a magistrate in the criminal courts. Fiona Sheil is a researcher, strategist and former commissioner. They are both part of a cross-sector alliance of practitioners setting up the UK’s first think tank dedicated to ending violence against women and girls. For more information, contact fiona@heard-consulting.co.uk