Essex Police helping women to stay with abusers

[Allthecoolkids]

AIBU to think this is a really really shit poster??

I can’t link to it but they posted it to FB this afternoon.

There are absolutely dangers with an approach of "Leave or we won't help you" but Women's Aid and so on have never approached DV like this either, so it's completely false to say that this kind of service is filling that particular gap.

It's always been the case that women can leave refuge and return to their partners and gain a space in another or the same refuge again later, no questions asked. Several times, unlimited times. It's not particularly publicised because the public dislike this image of abused women. However, it's always been the case that refuges have offered not only support to women fleeing violence for good but also women who simply need a break from the abuse but wish, even plan, to return. The original refuges were built on this principle, whatever vile beliefs Erin Pizzey had about women's motivations for returning, this has always been the case and has never changed, with the exception that these days refuge places are scarce and so it is not necessarily a given that women can come back and find another place. (However, they would never be rejected on grounds that they might return to their relationship, only on lack of space/possibly less urgent need?) DV workers know that it takes several attempts to leave and that you must never pressure a woman to leave, indeed, this is usually experienced as yet another form of control and coercion, so it is vitally important to avoid. Women's Aid used to have outreach workers who would work with women asking for help who were not willing, ready or able to leave their relationships. I don't know if these positions still exist. There used to be free counselling services dotted around the country to support women who were not yet at the point of leaving their relationships. Many of these have closed down.

Abused women need this understanding and support. It is their crucial lifeline. To attempt to replace this invaluable work with cruel, highly dangerous lies about how an abuser can learn to turn himself around just makes me want to weep for them.

Abused women tell themselves these lies every day - having an official programme repeat them, backed up by police and DV agencies, the people they need to be able to go to and get a completely different line - it is an utter disaster. Totally devastating.

You’re a good ‘un, bertie

They are normalising it!!!!

The only time i saw my Grans abused neighbour smile like that was when her husband died.

It’s interesting

Not all abusers are born monsters , they are made by their own fathers and mothers and many other factors

I can See the benefit of therapy and learning for anyone that does this .

But it’s sad and I assume for every 1 cure there are a few failures too

YANBU women end up staying in these relationships a lot of the time because they get convinced that if they put enough effort in things will get better. They wont. They just wont. Im not saying no one can ever go on to deal with their anger and violence issues and be in a relationship with someone safely after having been violent but that is quite rare and NEVER happens in the actual relationship where they have been repeatedly violent.

I think they could have worded the poster better and used a different photo

But many many women do stay for a number of reasons and many are in love with their abusive partners they need support for when they are one day hopefully ready to move on

The wording is clumsy and awful but the message is important. Women (and men) who don’t feel able to leave need and deserve support. The risks can be managed and minimised if we ensure these people feel able to ask for help and don’t leave the isolated.

It's a crap poster and worded bizarrely. Like staying with an abuser or not are equally valid options.

However I used to work as a social worker with elderly people and regularly came across couples who had been together 50, 60 years and it was clearly abusive but the 80 odd year old female just wouldn't dream of leaving. So I assume it's aimed at that kind of situation.

Feels like it should be more of an internal joint campaign/policy among police, social care and health rather than a weird smiling advert though.

YANBU. It would be better if the poster said: If you decide to stay or leave your abusive partner, we will support you.

The only way to keep someone living with an abusive partner safe is to hire 24 hour bodyguards for the victim. I can't see that happening.

Yes. I think it’s the wrong message.

“Leave him or stay, we’re still here for you” I can get on board with.

But “stay with your abuser and pose for happy smiling photograph” just goes against every fibre of me.

Women’s Aid don’t take this stance. I don’t know any other DV, victim support or abuse type charity that do.

I think it's to stop women feeling as though 'They've made their bed so they'll just have to lie in it'.

Too many women who feel unable to leave abusive partners, are afraid to reach out to family/friends/police, for fear of the "well if you put up, you should shut up" type of response.

This can cause them to bury their abuse deep underground.

I do think it should say, 'Sheila knew she'd never leave her abusive husband' though.

It is a lie to offer services to help people stay safely in an abusive relationship. It's an oxymoron.

The DV services have always been we'll support you if you stay or go. The problem is there are no DV services. Put funding back into DV services, not on these programmes.

Abuser programmes make some abusers worse. More than they cure. It's very rare to find an abuser who is genuinely motivated to change and/or genuinely oblivious to what they're doing.

Actually Bertie that's very true when you put it like that.

The police are woefully underfunded as it is, which must be incredibly frustrating for them.

But this campaign is likely to do more harm than good now I think about it.

Bertie, I think saying Women's Aid should do this is a bit of a red herring. Because I suspect most of the women who just won't leave simply wouldn't interact with them.

The fact is most of the women in situations where they are too ashamed to leave because of shame or stigma are probably only going to have contact with services if the police are called to incidents and are going to refuse any other intervention. Getting them to access some form of help via the police is often the only way they would get it.

I would like to see what Essex Police actually does to keep Sheila 'safe'. Because my guess is that it is very little- until the inevitable next incident happens.

Also, Women's Aid do not refuse to help people who are not ready to leave their partners. With refuges and things, obviously they have to be very careful because if you are still in touch with your partner and tell him where the refuge is, that will cause enormous problems for others residents.

Social services have to intervene if the children are suffering harm as a result of witnessing DV. This cannot change because DV is extremely harmful for children and there is no such thing as 'staying together safely' where a young child is witnessing it, even if the mother refuses to leave the relationship.

The thing is that DV victims so often minimise the violence and look for any reason to stay in the relationship. Here, we have a smiling happy lady and we are told that she is now 'safe'. Of course that gives hope to someone wavering between staying and going. I would rather see posters with stories of women who managed to leave and turn their lives around despite it seeming hopeless at the time.

When I was a solicitor, I had a client who was 78 years old. All her married life, her husband had beat her black and blue and also beat their children, who were now grown up. She was also part of a close-knit cultural community that disapproved of divorce. She said she had to finally do it and divorce him, just to be able to live out her last years in peace and not fear being beaten, especially now that she had arthritis. It was a long process (because he was an obstructive dick) but she did it in the end.

I would rather see posters with stories of women who managed to leave and turn their lives around despite it seeming hopeless at the time.

Those posters exist. In fact most DV posters are this sort of thing.

When I was a solicitor, I had a client who was 78 years old. All her married life, her husband had beat her black and blue and also beat their children, who were now grown up. She was also part of a close-knit cultural community that disapproved of divorce. She said she had to finally do it and divorce him, just to be able to live out her last years in peace and not fear being beaten, especially now that she had arthritis. It was a long process (because he was an obstructive dick) but she did it in the end.

I strongly object to this sort of attitude, that leaving is an option for everybody and therefore the only one which should be supported. Even your discussion of Women's Aid focuses on supporting women who are not ready to leave 'yet' which is precisely why many women who don't want to leave just won't engage with them. Of course when there are children involved it should sometimes come down to 'leave or lose your children'. It's great that your client left, but just because she did it didn't mean that lots of other women either want to or will leave and that doesn't mean they don't deserve some support.

I've worked in two different ethnic communities where DV was fairly commonplace and accepted, seen as something the wife must have brought on herself. Leaving or engaging with Women's Aid would simply be seen as further proof she was a disobedient wife who deserved chastising. Leaving could cost you your entire family, community, grown up children, friends.

For every woman who leaves I would guess there are at least another 20 who just accept it as part of life.

I think the poster is awful because of the smiley faces and general presentation. But I think the idea that women should only be supported if they leave or if it's hoped they will leave in the future is an awful one.

Some women are only going to engage with support if they know leaving is not on the agenda. They're not going to engage with feminist organisations or ones which are known to support leaving. Even women's support groups for their own community are deeply stigmatised. Support via the frontline services of police and health are probably the only ways to engage them. They shouldn't be locked out of support just because they don't subscribe to someone else's ideology.

Women do absolutely engage with Womens Aid with no intention of leaving. And WA absolutely do offer support to women who have no intention of leaving.

The presentation of the poster is bad, but the message is absolutely one we need to get across. Everyone knows there is help to leave, WA, refuges, DV charities, SS, court accompaniment etc. But there is also help available for those who don't want to or feel they can't leave, and that message need to get out as well.

I think this thread is only reinforcing the idea that leave is the only acceptable notion and that nobody cares about you if you that is not your plan.

I can See the benefit of therapy and learning for anyone that does this

But it’s sad and I assume for every 1 cure there are a few failures too

DV perp programmes have a success rate of no more than 15%.

It's very difficult to get abusers to acknowlege what they're doing is wrong, and almost impossible to get them to change.

Self change is a very long, arduous process, most people can't be bothered.

But I think the idea that women should only be supported if they leave or if it's hoped they will leave in the future is an awful one.

That's a straw man (hate that term), no-one has said that.

DV charities support people whether they leave or not. But they can't lie and say that people can be safe if they stay with an abuser.

That's what this ad does - tell a dangerous falsehood that the police can protect women in abusive relationships. If that were true 2 women wouldn't be killed a week by partner or ex partner.

And actually 75% of women murdered by a partner, are killed after they have left.

I strongly object to this sort of attitude, that leaving is an option for everybody and therefore the only one which should be supported. Even your discussion of Women's Aid focuses on supporting women who are not ready to leave 'yet' which is precisely why many women who don't want to leave just won't engage with them.

What sort of attitude? The fact is that if you stay with a violent person who injures you, you face a real risk of being seriously injured or even killed. You can dress it up and romanticise it all you want but there is no such thing as being safe with your abuser and while I sympathise with women unwilling to leave, it is never going to be something that I support as a good alternative option, largely due to having seen the traumatic life-long impact it has on the children growing up in those homes, going on to repeat the cycle themselves.

Research shows that parental DV against another person is a form of child-abuse. Nobody would ever ever say it is an acceptable option to stay with a man who is sexually abusing your DC so why is other abusive behaviour seen to be okay?

More women than ever are staying with abusers because there is a lack of financial and emotional support for them due to funding cuts. This campaign is papering over the cracks, pretending all is well, but actually not giving women a real chance to get away from the abuse.

I am not in any way saying that women who stay should not be offered support and they are not currently denied support by the hugely underfunded charities. However, it needs to be seen as a long process with hopefully the victim eventually being able to make the break from the relationship. To do that, we must also reinforce that DV is utterly utterly unacceptable and I don't think this poster does that. It shows victim and abuser happily smiling and posing together. As someone else said, if you had a similar poster with a bully and victim being best mates, people would be up in arms.

As I said before this ad will lull people into a false sense of security, telling them what they want to hear.

But I think the idea that women should only be supported if they leave or if it's hoped they will leave in the future is an awful one.

Literally nobody has said that.

Xpost - yy to wildblue