To think that women's refuges are not "outdated"

[BertieBotts]

Article in the Guardian today about closure of women's refuges.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/03/domestic-violence-refuge-crisis-women-closure-safe-houses

This is so, so sad and frightening and should not be happening. Outdated, FFS. I wish the need were outdated, but it is very much not. I presume that the "outdated" comment is borne of some pressing need to include men, somehow forgetting that refuges are not just about having a safe place to flee to (of course, this is important for male and female victims) but also about a recovery, a shared female existence, the acknowledgement that male violence against women is not "just a domestic issue", but happens within a culture which excuses and condones it, for the most part. Female abuse victims need specialist support because of this. Not to mention that women are far more often fleeing with children, meaning different kinds of facilities are needed. Female violence against men (or male on male partner violence, which is actually more common) still exists of course and yes should be taken seriously, with victims supported and given a safe space but to say that it is the same, and that the same kind of support, recovery and facilities are needed is a fallacy.

It absolutely gobsmacks me that one was closed because they were having higher numbers of women return to their partners. Removing it altogether helps how? And the closing of specialist Asian and BME centres is an utter disgrace.

What can we do? There have been petitions, fund raisers. They don't seem to be DOING anything.

You see I wonder if a couple of valid points are made there. Women are reluctant to leave their homes as it upsets all their routines - kids school places, jobs etc, this is why they put up with it and keep going back time after time.

Also - why are we moving the victim? Apart from personal safety, isn't this the ultimate in a kind of victim blaming? Why not sort out the PROBLEM? ( although not convinced the gmts changes to criminal justice actually would do this)

I think its good to think about what service refuges actually provide and to think about changing them. IME it takes a LOT to get a woman to go into a refuge and even more to stop her going back into the relationship

I agree OP.

Couldn't agree more. My town (one of the areas mentioned in that article) lost its refuges not long ago. The new provider 'wants to focus on keeping women in their homes' which is dangerous for all the reasons already mentioned. Its scary but locals don't seem ti have even noticed - because it'll never happen to them right?

We have no local WA anymore. The lack of support is terrifying.

but if its scary ( which it obv can be) WHY are the men not being either punished or rehabilitated? Why are they not prosecuted?

Sadly often the case is that the woman withdraws support for the prosecution.

all THAT needs to be looked at to stop these offenders just moving onto another victim

Thanks for sharing Bertie all my comments I'm about to make use women as an example but they can & do equally apply to men.

Refuges are essential. The process of leaving a violent relationship is complex & it can be long as only the victim themselves can get the courage to leave. If you have lived in fear for a number of years & the fear of being found after you had left is stronger than the fear of remaining then its very very difficult to leave. There needs to be a place where women can run to in the dead of night with their children & nothing but the clothes on their backs. Closing refuges & not replacing them with a similar thing is leaving women no choice but to stay with their abuser or go out into the night with nowhere to go, and the fear of living on the streets will not encourage women to leave.

This leapt out at me:

In Devon the women's groups running the two refuges lost out to a Wiltshire-based firm, Splitz Support Services, which did not provide a refuge in its tendering bid and instead promoted the use of preventative measures like the government's new domestic violence protection orders.

wtaf? Preventative measures? How the fuck can you prevent abuse with a protection order?! Complete nonsense.

I know that some women choose to go back to the abuser, but as I said earlier the relationship between a victim/abuser is complex & if you have not been in such a relationship, then its difficult to see why a woman would choose to return & its easier to have contempt for those women rather than to provide ongoing support for them as it then gets into victim blaming.

I think this is a really good example of the problems that happen when the vast majority of politicians are male. They just seem so clueless about issues that effect women, from employment and childcare issues, to dealing with domestic violence and provision of support services for women living with domestic abuse.

Yvette Cooper wrote a guest post outlining how the use of community resolutions had tripled,

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/2145406-Guest-post-from-Yvette-Cooper-State-sanctioned-apologies-for-domestic-violence-have-to-stop

From all of this to awfully low conviction rates for rape and sexual assault cases and such low sentencing for these crimes, I think our society is failing so many women at the moment.

I think it hilarious that at the moment, all the political parties are gearing up to do well in next years election. I think it would be an absolute synch to win, start focusing on tackling the huge inequality that effects 50% of the electorate.

I have not had the opportunity to read the article or your post fully. on my mobile and rushing I will later. I just felt the need to respond based on the title alone. My mother left my evil cunt if a step father and a shelter helped us relocate from him. I was young but I remember the beatings and visiting my mother numerous times in hospital. Out dated or not we believe my mother would have died at his hands had we had no where to run. The shelter was a safe place for us and hundreds if other women and children.

These decisions are coming from Theresa May, so I think it's unfair to lay the blame on male politicians.

These decisions are coming from Theresa May, so I think it's unfair to lay the blame on male politicians.

My understanding is that this is a result of the tendering process that local authorities use rather than a decision by Theresa May to cut funding or close specific refuges. That the funding decisions are all on a more local level.

The article does say she has the power to ringfence the budgets of refuges, but refuses to do so.

But her government has drastically reduced the budgets of local authorities whilst preventing them from increasing council tax - thus leading to cuts in services, often to the most vulnerable - including refuges

I don't think she is therefore blameless

YY and they can't ringfence everything - schools and hospitals (I think hospitals?) come out of that same budget.

It should be seen as an essential but it is not.

Good point though that women shouldn't have to leave their homes. Perhaps refuges were only ever meant as a temporary solution. 40 years on, you'd think that the laws etc could achieve this. But as ever, it is not that simple. It's never ever as black and white as "abuse = victim wants to leave and never go back".

it's all very well saying that the abuser should leave, but part of the fear for many victims is that if they are at home the abuser knows where they are

I agree that women staying in their own homes is often just not realistically safe at the moment.

It's completely true that we should be putting a big push of effort into keeping violent partners away from their ex's, but until that is the case you cannot remove the refuge places. It leaves women with the shitty decision of staying or becoming homeless with no support.

Yes. Abuse victims should not be the ones to leave their homes.

Practically speaking there's no way they can make that happen. It would have to involve the police arresting and putting a restraining order on a man purely on her say so before a trial or anything else. I'm sure you can see how that would be abused by couples going through a break up and one wanting the house, etc.. We can't keep a bunch of people either locked up or barred from their own home based on a say so.

That said, long term is needed for abuse victims to get over their dependency issues and get their life back on track. They need to get a job, new home, get mental health resolved, child care so they have free time for all those, and then there's the issue that all the ex has to do is demand to see his kids and courts can intervene and force her to be near him and possible give him the new address.

Hang about a minute.

The article says that in part the councils are cutting funding for refuges because they do not take men.

That is outrageous.

So the tendering processes are designed to ignore the fact that domestic violence is gendered and overwhelmingly perpetrated against women, and that it is in no way appropriate for female victims of abuse to share accommodation with men?

Sounds like the patriarchy has thought up yet another brilliant wheeze to keep women in dangerous situations.

I was thinking about this just when exercising. It is the only offence where we DO kind of blame the victim. If someone was burgled,(I know not exactly the same) we wouldn't make them move out of their house. When Criado was threatened didn't they beef up security at her place?
Why do we still insist on making the woman move? Is it just enabling the offender?

it would be great if the victim could stay at home, but realistically it's not a safe option for them

A refuge saved my life. I had nowhere else to go and, if I had stayed, he would have killed me eventually. He had tried and failed.

When I was given my council house, he found us, thanks to a 'friend' who believed his story about me making up the broken bones, bruises and wounds, and believed he should be allowed to see 'his' son. The same son he had pushed me down the stairs to try and kill.

He started breaking in at night and raping me. He stole all our furniture when I went away for a weekend. He beat the living hell out of a male friend of mine.

It stopped because he went to prison for something else. He's dead now. Good.

We close refuges, more women will die. It is that simple. If men need refuge places, and I don't doubt they do, then they should be provided, but not at the expense of places for women.

That's appalling.

Anyone who's followed one of the heartrending threads on the boards here in the last few months of the several extremely brave women who left the situation they were in and went into a refuge would see immediately that those women a) would have been all too easily convinced to stay put and let the abuse continue, they've been well trained by their abuser, it takes a LOT of encouragement to get them to leave and b) they HAD to have somewhere to go where their abuser could not find or follow them, and even in the refuge they were dealing with calls, cars crawling past with their abuser watching them, and other family members being harrassed and abused to give up their location. Leaving them in their own home is insane.

Whoever is making these ridiculous decisions has clearly not done any real research at all and is leaving out all the inconvenient facts. It may be terribly 'in' to push the equality agenda but there is no getting away from that inconvenient 89% statistic.

Mumsnet HQ, we need a campaign here.

This is off topic (a lot) but are there male refuges with children?

Anyway, I agree this is horrible. My friend who has used a refuge and I honestly believe it partly saved her life. She needed it to recover away from men and to get away from the abuse. Her stbxh had history for stalking and physically assaulting her when she had left for a few days in the past when she would stay with friends etc; so being in a refuge provided added protection- security and having his ex not which/where her refuge was. What if they hadn't arrested him, or they'd not charged him and he came home? Society still has a massive problem with preventing domestic abuse and also how police and courts deal with domestic a use, how people see domestic abuse as a whole.

Yes there are vampire, but I don't know how much use they get.

Oh sorry, I'm not sure if that was clear, there are refuge places for men and their children. But I don't know how often they are used by men with children.

Being discussed on Vic Derbyshire's show now.