To think that women's refuges are not "outdated"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 Outdated, FFS. I wish the need were outdated, but it is very much not. I presume that the "outdated" comment is borne of some pressing need to include men, somehow forgetting that refuges are not just about having a safe place to flee to (of course, this is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.

Women's Aid say that there is a call to police concerning domestic abuse once every minute. That's the same as the number of babies being born in the UK. And that less than 40% is reported. And of the cases which are reported, there are almost certainly other incidences leading up to the one which was "bad enough" to report, which don't make it into that 60+% statistic either.

It is endemic and it is totally, totally foolhardy to suggest for a second that the need for refuges is outdated.

Because its "just the women" Bertie.

Great post

I'm really surprised at how few people have posted on this given how often women's aid is recommended on here.

I'm lucky enough to have not been in an abusive relationship myself, but I contacted WA about a friend before and they were so helpful and willing to get her a refuge place that she really needed when she was ready to call them herself.

Men haven't stopped abusing women.

It is such fucking arrogance to not let WOMEN take the lead on what they need when they are stuck in these situations.

I was involved in setting up a refuge in my home area 35+ years ago - and when I read that article this morning, I wanted to scream . It seemed to just push aside all the advances of the last 40 years...

Great post Bertie

Maybe this is an issue Mumsnet could look into getting behind?

This is utterly appealling, shows how far removed from reality these politicians are. The refuges are vital, and are very much needed.

Agree, agree, agree. The refuges are vital, this is so important. We haven't even managed a nationwide conversation about male violence and the effect of patriarchy on personal relationships in the forty years that the refuges have been saving lives. Now they are shutting? We can't let this happen, there are women and children right now in dangerous situations whose survival depend on the future of refuges.

It's such a lack of empathy, compassion and insight. Westminster is so out of touch with reality. I can't believe that there isn't a single MP who doesn't know or hasn't met someone who has survived because of a refuge? How can they turn their back on this?

This is really sad, I spent 5 weeks in a refuge earlier this year, despite feeling like a complete fraud, no idea what I would have done without that place.

Refuges do have a no Male policy for a reason,also a no violence policy, there was a Woman there who was apparently the violent partner in the relationship, she obviously had mh problems. She had a few complaints made about her and apparently hit my child :S, and was asked to leave pretty sharpish.

If you would like MN to get behind a campaign, there's a post written by me in the MN Campaigns section.

Spotted this in my Twitter feed earlier. Domestic abuse victim sanctioned and left with just £2 to live on.

www.opendemocracy.net/5050/dawn-foster/whose-recovery-gendered-austerity-in-uk

that's a very interesting point chunderella - a sort of online refuge

They should have separate men's rufuge, it's inappropriate to have mixed ones IMHO. Sometimes things need to be segregated for the health and well being of the users of the service.

But they seem to have been managing just fine up until now? I mean mobile phones and social media isn't that new.

I don't see any reason that refuges are still not needed.

Aeroflot, not only that, men should not seek to bogart services that women set up for women who were fleeing male violence. It's absurd, and not only that, it's disgraceful.

Imagine if racial violence was still so largely ignored that there were safe houses for people of colour to hide from racist white people. And then forty years later, nothing having been done to stop the white people from attacking people of colour, some terribly important white person in parliament decides that these safe houses don't deserve funding unless they also open safe houses for white people who have been attacked by a black person.

It sounds totally ridiculous. And yet there are still people who insist that intimate partner violence against men is the same thing as it is when it happens to women.

It is disgusting, the women who use them have been violated by men, assaulted, abused, raped even, politicians want to introduce mixed facilities , what planet are they on!

Thanks captchaos, added to.

They don't want to introduce mixed facilities, to be fair, that is not being suggested anywhere.

What they want is for organisations to offer shelter to men as well as to women, in separate facilities, but because it's expensive to set up a whole other refuge, and to offer a few flats or something is not equal to the provision for women, this is the barrier to funding. So the refuges are being done away with and single sex, separate, less secure accommodation is being provided which is gender specific, so only women can use these four flats and only men can use those four.

It's preposterous in the first place for women's aid organisations to be expected to provide this service. Then secondly there seems to be huge ignorance of the fact that men and women fleeing abuse are not dealing with the same situation. Self contained, secret flats and/or rooms with secure entry and a direct line to the police or security staff on site would be adequate for men fleeing violence, especially with access to outreach services. There is nothing stopping mens' charities or LGBT charities (most male victims of IPV are in homosexual relationships - again, the perpetrators are men) from setting this up, either, apart from possibly funding and perhaps regulation - I believe the first women's refuges were just literally houses, and people slept on mattresses on the floor because there was not room for all the beds they needed. This probably isn't allowed today.

For women it is a different situation. They are not just fleeing a relationship which is violent, that is not the whole picture. A male abuser literally believes that he owns his female partner, and there is a certain level of honour for him in protecting and asserting his "property". I can't find where I read this now (maybe on twitter yesterday) but there was an interview set up with several refuge workers, who told of the absolutely extraordinary and almost unbelievable attempts that violent partners would go to to try and reach their victims. The piece made for shocking reading - and in the end, it could not be published because of fears for the workers' safety.

This is the kind of thing there is still silence on. We are very good at talking about DV now, acknowledging it is damaging, etc, but I think most people live in this fantasy world where it all happened in the past and it doesn't happen any more, perhaps very very rarely. Not the case :(

Oh and having re-read the article, in many areas refuges have been closed and replaced with floating services. This is not good enough.

I mean one of the reasonings is "Women don't want to uproot their lives and leave their homes" When did they? :( Total agreement that they shouldn't have to, but a floating service does not keep anybody safe when their life is literally in danger.

Agree with you OP.

I tell you what else is also scary that there is only one refuge place for men in the whole of the UK.

No there isn't missda, did you read my link up thread? In 2012 there were at least 25 beds for heterosexual men, and more than 25 for men in the lgbt community.

If you read the link in the OPs post you'll see that there are also beds being held open for men that have never been used because there is no demand!

If there is a shortage of beds for men either strain or gay then of course more should be provided but never at the expense of beds for women who are killed at a rate of 2 a week by current or ex partners.

Link to the campaigns page if anyone wants to ask HQ about setting up a campaign.

Great posts, Bertie.

I spent a couple of weeks in a refuge five years ago. It wouldn't have worked for me to have stayed in the house and for my ex to be forced to leave. I don't think he would have meted out extreme levels of violence, but still, if he'd known where I was, the following would have happened:

a) there's a high chance he could have wormed his way back in. At the time I was overwhelmed with guilt about depriving dd of her father (as it seemed at the time), and unsure if it was all my fault, as he always insisted. He was texting and phoning and promising to change - it was temting to believe him. An abusive relationship brainwashes you - I needed time in the refuge to clear my head.

b) if he'd failed in his attempts to get back in, I'm very afraid he would have taken dd. Without a court order, I didn't have any more "rights" to her than he did. He is not a UK national, and he could have made a pretty good attempt at disappearing with her for quite a long time. She was 18 months at the time, so not old enough to tell anyone.

I can't believe things are going backwards so rapidly for women. Women who point out the structural unfairnesses towards women are dismissed as wallowing in victimhood instead of people who are proactively looking for justice and fairness.

I was told that last week in a meeting. I must have misunderstood.

Perhaps the person was misinformed?

Anyway if men's refuge places are being used up then yes they do need more refuges.

Just please don't ask women's refuge organisations to provide them. We need more women's refuge places too.

from the guardian article above:

"The Wolverhampton Haven, which has run the refuges for 41 years, is having its funding from the city cut by £300,000 and – as it struggles to maintain services – has been forced to reserve some of its places for men, even though it has had no male referrals to the accommodation so far."

there should be places for men. but why is this at the expense of places for women?