Is there a thread about May scraping the law to help abused women throw out their abusive husbands?

[MmeLindt]

I am insenced to read that a scheme to protect women from abusive partners is to be scrapped.

"Go orders" planned for England and wales would give senior police officers to remove an abusive partner from the family home for two weeks and ban him from being within a certain distance to the house.

This would give the woman time to regroup, and seek help.

Wait a moment. We are not talking about someone being permanently thrown out of their home. We are talking about 2 weeks.

And since when has the right to remain in a cosy house been more important than the safety of women and children?

According to the article, the scheme is in place in other countries already so there must be some data on how it works.

I doubt very much that they would use this order on a first time call out. I could see it being used when police are called out to a house that they have been to before. It must be terrible for the police to be called to a house on a regular basis and know that they cannot help the woman.

Sometimes the couple of weeks space is enough for the woman to realise that she CAN manage alone and let her get legal advice on how to get out of her marriage.

Tbh, I am surprised that there is so little interest in this topic.

"Wait a moment. We are not talking about someone being permanently thrown out of their home. We are talking about 2 weeks.

And since when has the right to remain in a cosy house been more important than the safety of women and children? "

But it's still an infringment on someones rights when they have been proven guilty of nothing and it's not even issued by a member of the judiciary.
The point is that if there was evidence enough of abuse to arrest them then they would, so this scheme is obviously in place for when the police suspect abuse or there is an allegation of abuse but they can't substantiate it yet they still receive a manner of a punishment.
Nobody is saying that "the right to remain cosy in a house" or to put it another way a persons property rights trump someones right to not be abused. What they are saying is that infringing on someones rights when they have been found guilty of no crime is a very dodgy legal precedent especially if the decision is being made by a police officer.
As I said above in Ireland we do allow ex-parte barring orders to be issued under the DV act 2006. It can exclude someone from their home but a hearing must be scheduled for no later than 8 days later and it will only be issued where extreme abuse is alleged.
Now so far this has worked ok but it is already being questioned on grounds of vagueness.
For example if this scheme were in place what is the standard of proof necessary to decide that abuse has taken place? Will it prejudice the man in a future trial should one arrive? What if the partner has no interest in the property?what if the partner has a minority interest? Is it at the sole discretion of the police officer?
Will a criminal charge automatically follow? If not then will the man have the chance to fight the allegation?

I don't know how you can jump from people questioning the legal basis and implementation of such a scheme and how it would opperate to "so abusers should be left in a cosy home and allowed to beat their kids?"

"
I doubt very much that they would use this order on a first time call out. I could see it being used when police are called out to a house that they have been to before. It must be terrible for the police to be called to a house on a regular basis and know that they cannot help the woman."

There's nothing in the article to suggest that. that is your hypothesis but there's nothing to support it. Which is exactly why people are entitled to question these laws when the standards and implementation are unclear.
It's very hard to establish a sound legal basis for someone who is not a member of the judiciary making orders to exclude someone from their own property for a non-negligible length of time and there is aquestion of how you balance the rights of the two people.
In Ireland the balance is that it must be ordered by a judge and it must be returned to the court within 8 days. I think that is a fair enough balance.

Mayor
Fine, if they were saying that the scheme in Ireland is a better one, then lets go with that. But they are not. They are cutting this plan without any replacement or any idea of how to help women in this situation.

I can see your point that a person could be ejected from his/her home without evidence of wrongdoing, that is a valid problem.

What I really do not understand is that when this law was proposed, all parties were in favour.

Suddenly it is being scrapped, and the arguments are that it is unlawful.

Why did they let it get this far then?

No idea.
Most likely the reasons they'll give are because they only realised the potential problems when they looked at how it would be implemented etc. although that sounds daft because a host of problems have been spotted by people on this thread alone who have far less legal insight at their disposal than the people who proposed it.
Hell in Ireland only 5 years ago we had to decide that the imprisonment of a number of paedophiles was unlawful as the charge didn't allow a defence of honest belief. So at times the law can be woefully short-sighted.
The reality might be closer to what others have suggested, it was policy showboating and used for a bit of self-congratulations by all parties without ever looking at the fundamentals etc. which has now had to be cut due to lack of funds.

TBH policies and laws like this will always be problematic because at the end of the day it is attempting to find a solution to abuse when there is not enough evidence for a criminal charge yet you are essentially judging that a criminal offence has taken place.
I'd agree our solution is better but only because it is our judiciary and not a police officer who decides. However it then comes with it's own problems. If it is in a court then what is the standard civil or criminal? and if it meets these criterias then surely a charge must automatically follow to prosecute the man and allow him to defend his name, but that brings us back to why this legislation is needed i.e. for cases where there is not enough evidence to satisfy such burden of proof. This is the vagueness which plagues Irish DV law at the moment but it is only a theoretical questioning at the moment, the laws are yet to be challenged so for now it is working well.

"Nobody is saying that "the right to remain cosy in a house" or to put it another way a persons property rights trump someones right to not be abused."

But they are. That's exactly wht this is saying.

Is no one interested in the fact that along with the abolition of this scheme, there is no proposal to offer an alternative method to ensure the safety of women and children? Is that just some mad feminist pipe dream, the idea that a government should give a shit about the safety of its vulnerable citizens and come up with some ideas to ensure that safety?

The tories hate women, seriously they do.

No they are saying that the oppossing rights must be balanced and someones right to a fair trial, property rights and right to the presumption of innocence should not be over-rode without a suitable system in place to restore them or without a set-out burden of proof.

However you dress it up, in the end you have to come down on one side or the other.

Personally I would always come down on the side of the safety of vulnerable groups - women and children.

How can you balance the right to be safe in your own home with the right of someone who might kill you, to stay there?

How is it possible to balance those, without being unfair to one or other?

There's no balance here - you have to come down on one side or the other.

It's no surprise that this government doesn't come down on the side of the vulnerable.

No you don't. You can balance these rights. The persons right to not be abused is higher up on the hier-archy of rights that's a given. But this does not mean that it destroys the other persons rights especially when no one has been formally accused or convicted of anything.
If the person is convicted then the balance is easy to strike, you have an exclusion order etc. so his rights are superceded.
If there is nothing proved then you have to strike a balance.
I've suggested a balance above which we have in Ireland which comes down on neither side but looks to protect the claimant of DV without prejudicing the accusseds right to a fair trial and to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Even with the schem given if you reduced the time of exclusion to 1 week or lengthened it to 3 you are participating in a balancing of right.
hell even by advocating the implementation of the initial proposal you are advocating a balancing of rights. having to come down on one side or the other would involve saying either
1)you can't exclude him at all he has property rights
2)he should be excluded for life the woman has a right to be safe.
Yet nobody is saying that. They are questioning as to how you can best satisfy the rights of all parties while protecting potential victims of DV from their abusers within the constructs of recognised law.

We should be worried. There are real econoic reasons to stamp women down to their 'rightful' place. It's terrifying.

"They are questioning as to how you can best satisfy the rights of all parties while protecting potential victims of DV from their abusers within the constructs of recognised law"

MQ, no, no-one is doing that.

There is not a murmer from Theresa May or anyone in the Tory or Liberal parties, about what they can do to protect potential victims of DV.

The report simply says tht this scheme is being scrapped becasue of cost. Not because it was thought to be ineffective, or coming down to heavy on one side of the argument, or too legally difficult to enforce - but because of cost. And there is no mention of how else to protect DV victims. None whatsoever.

I do understand your misgivings, MayorQ but I keep coming back to the point that it is not a permanent exclusion from the marital home. It is a temporary measure designed to remove the abusive partner from the home for a short period of time.

Exactly. Which is a balancing of rights. To me the time sounds ok. I'd say anywhere between 7-11 days myself but 2 weeks isn't that far off.
My misgiving, and many others on this thread is how it would be implemented not the length of the exclusion. So the issuing by a police officer rather than a judge would worry me. The lack of a definition of what the burden of proof is to justify the exclusion would worry me.
What is the comeback for the accused?In ireland it is a return to the court within 8 days, in this proposed system it seems to be that at the end of the 2 weeks it just ends rather than go to court so does the accused get his day in court?what of his presumption of innocence. A temporary exclusion from the home seems like a fair balance of their property rights however there has been nothing highlighted with regards to the right to a fair trial and the right to the presumption of innocence and how such an exclusion order would effect these.
That's my only problem, not that the courts would have the power to exclude a person from their home. Not that their property rights are the paramount importance here. But how you could stand on legal ground with an exclusion order not issued by the courts etc.

But Theresa May hasn't abolished it becuase of your misgivings MQ.

She's abolished it purely and simply on grounds of cost. (at least, that's what the report implies.) Even if you accept that this scheme has problems, where is the alternative proposal to keep women and children safe?

For me, tht's the issue here - not the legalities of how you enforce this. Basically, the first female Home Secretary in our history, is saying that the safety of women and children is not worth paying for. Not that the scheme is unworkable, or unjust, or legally too complex - but that it costs too much.

It costs too much to keep women and children safe. It fucking costs too much.

How much does it cost to have 2 women a week murdered by their partners or ex partners? How expensive is that?

.

HerBeatitude I read about this dropping of this 'go order' scheme in respectable newspaper and one of the reasons for the droppage of the scheme was problems about legislation (or words to that effect).

Now it was written as if this wasn't the MAIN reason, but I suspect it is.
The dropping of the scheme because of costs probably massages the g-spot of tories, tbh.

If this scheme was taken up, I suspect that, in the interests of equality, it would have to apply to both abusive men AND women.

My ex used to tell me a lot during arguments that he'd 'call the police to have me removed'. I'd say: 'But I've not done anything!!!'
He was clever and manipulative. If this scheme were allowed, I'd be chucked out despite lack of proof.

I hope this incident demonstrates:
a, How the law of unintended consequences can play out.
b, Why proof is so very important.

Even though I'm a female, I am also sick of this 'vulnerable women' business.
Either women are adults who are capable of doing same professional jobs as men and thus controlling their private lives or they're silly creatures who need protection of men and can't be trusted in professional job.

Can't have it both ways.

Children have to be protected always, by the way.

I mean surely TRUE equality would be about protecting vulnerable men as well as women? So why all this 'vulnerable women' schtick?

How anyone can honestly think that a woman who is being seriously abused will instantly relax and think 'Ah, he's gone. I can plan now' is totally beyond me.
She would be on tenterhooks waiting for him to return in the early hours (or at any time of day).

I can only assume that those who buy the 'breathing space' argument have never been scared themselves or have zero imagination.

Marantha women will cease to be vulnerable when 2 of them a week aren't murdered by their partners or exes.

We can have it both ways - it is not unreasonable to suggest that in a country where 2 of us a week are murdered, there need to be extra safeguards to try and ensure our safety.

How a demand for safety, compromises our right to equal pay, is quite beyond me tbh. I don't see wanting to survive, as being incompatible with wanting to have the same access to promotion opportunities as men. Can't really understand that logic.

And again I'm asking, do you not feel outraged that there is no alternative suggestion as to how to protect women and children who are being subjected to DV?

Presumably the order would apply to men as much as women. Fact is, there are far more women victims of DV than men.

If the Tory objection to this was genuinely about enforcement and practicalities, they'd be suggesting alternatives. Actually it's another stupid cut.

Before the Tories got in, they were promising they wouldn't make stupid cuts that merely shift the costs around the system. Actually that's exactly what they are doing. Take protection away from victims of domestic violence and you end up with serious assault or murder. And one murder case comes in far more expensive than hundreds of these orders.

Same thing in the NHS, there are cuts being pushed through that will merely make another part of the system more expensive.

Btw, Teresa May isn't the first female home sec, that was Jacqui Smith.

I once did some work with a council where the DV unit was offering women (victims, presumaly men as well where appropriate) support to get the man (perpetrator) out of the house. The victim had free choice whether to get the perpetrator out or leave themselves.

Council said it worked quite well. They didn't just chuck the perpetrator out and leave it at that, they took further action - forget the details but panic alarms and fast police response to any breaches were part of it.

LOL at how unmemorable Jacqui Smith was!

I had completely forgotten about her...

edam - May did say they would look at value for money alternatives or something like that.

I wrote to my MP as soon as the story came to my attention - not asking her to oppose the decision - but asking her to request that May's department outline their alternative proposals to protect victims of DV and costings for them. So hopefully she will and there'll be a transcript saying if there are any other proposals floating around to replace this one.

well done ana, will do the same.

I do not believe that a woman can throw a man out of a house that HE is SOLE owner of on a permanent basis.
Please correct me if wrong.

"asking her to request that May's department outline their alternative proposals to protect victims of DV"

The best things that they could do is to make clear that DV affects both men and women, that it can be committed by both men and women and, most importantly, to make the punishments more severe.

I've known two victims of what I would call "serious" DV.

The male suffered it for years covering up the marks as being from accidents. He didn't feel at all able to come forward or even admit it until he had finally left the woman who was doing it. Men like that need support. Too often men see headlines and topics like this that only refer to women as victims. Have you ever heard of a men's refuge? And I bet some will snicker at that and dismiss the idea as silly, people reacted the same way at first to the idea that a husband shouldn't beat his wife. DV is wrong, end of.

The female also suffered it for years and finally took it to the police after one very serious incident. The man got away with a non-custodial sentence of one kind or another. Men like that need to be locked up. Too often the woman does have the courage to come forward and follow the legal process through only for the courts to give a derisory punishment. What kind of example does that set to any of her friends or family that were still suffering as victims? Pathetic.