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.

No, it is not like locking someone up "on a hunch".

The Go Order would be issued, as I understand it, by a senior Police officer after a call out for an incidence of DV.

The victim cannot phone the police and say, "I want a Go Order" and have his/her partner thrown out of the house.

It is a protective measure, a short-term protective measure.

Here

"Under the Domestic Violence Protection Order or 'Go' violent partners will be banned from their homes for up to two weeks. Local caseworkers will use the duration of the order to advise the victim of their options and services if they decide to leave the relationship including help on securing a long-term injunction."

So it is not just a case of chucking someone out of their home.

Here, sorry

Argh. I don't know why the link does not work.

Yes but it's suspected dv, isn't it? I just don't think that suspicion is enough.
It seems to me that a senior police officer would be tempted to err on the side of caution- why not, it's only 2 weeks, isn't it?

I also find the idea of 'breathing space' dubious. Unless there is some kind of 24-hour 'bodyguard' provided to the woman, I find it hard to believe that she could relax enough to plan anything.

Some male abusers are very manipulative and clever, I can see instances where the abused woman would be told to leave the home owing to the abusive partner claiming she attacked him.

Suspicion alone is never enough.

All in all, I think the idea of refuges staffed with professional people is a better one.

Nobody as yet addressed here the issues of removing a man from a home in which he is Sole owner without a fair trial.
I wish they would.

"It's not my job as a feminist to correct all social ills"

no its not, but as a feminist one of your founding principles is supposed to be equality.

Things happen on suspicion all the time. People are arrested on suspicion of doing things and put in cells, which is worse than not being allowed into your house. If suspicion is not enough then no-one would be allowed to be held on remand or arrested and detained and so on.

Equality for women.

It is not a requirement of feminism to take up the mantle for any other groups of people who want equality.

It's like saying that people fighting for equality for ethnic minorities also have to join the fight for those who are fighting for the rights of white people. Join in if you want, sure, but i don't see why you're letting your principles down if you choose not to.

ISNT Yes but presumably those held on remand or arrested and detained have the right to a fair trial via the judicial system. There doesn't seem to be mention of that in these 'go orders'.

They have a right to a fair trial if they are charged with anything at the end of the process. People are often released without charge having been detained for some period of time.

ISNT So you're advocating that people can be made homeless for 2 weeks on suspicion of domestic violence?

I am so so glad that those who made the decision about these 'go orders' disagree with you.

Why? Because as a female who lived with a man who threatened to chuck me out virtually every time we argued- 'On what grounds?! I've only dared to answer you back!' I'd say- I would probably find myself homeless with nowhere to go because my extremely clever ex would no doubt have convinced the police I was the 'nasty' one.

I also put it to you that very few abused women would find planning easy when her abuser could break in the home from which he's been banished.
Do you think they could plan under this stress?

The Police supported Go Orders

Senior Police Officer is states as Inspector or higher.

There is information here in English how it is done in Austria.

I had thought that feminism was

"Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."

not just equality for women.

marantha I was responding to these comments of yours

"Yes but it's suspected dv, isn't it? I just don't think that suspicion is enough."
"Suspicion alone is never enough. "

by pointing out that suspicion alone is plenty for the authorities to do all sorts of things to you in the UK.

surely the authorities act on suspicion based on evidence?

For me it's equality for women. Men can fight their own fights. If they want some support then as E&M says I'm happy to sign a petition, but when I don my marching shoes or pick up my letter writing pen with my feminist hat on, then I'm doing something to help women. Many things that help women also happen to help men - all well and good. But that's a happy side-effect, not the initial aim.

You well know that every feminist will have a different vision of what it means for her, and what she believes in, and what she cares about. There is no "rulebook".

BBJ um no, why do you think that?

People can be arrested for "acting suspiciously", they can be searched, if they have "form" and were in the vicnity of a crime they might be picked up and questioned, and so on and so on.

In lots of cases they arrest the suspect/s and then look for evidence. if they always had to have evidence before arresting or detaining someone then it would be a completely different set-up to what we have now.

Do you think the law should be changed in this regard?

ISNT If a man really IS suspected of violence towards another human being, then he should be treated as a suspected criminal and held accordingly.
Why on earth is banning him from his home for two weeks the appropriate action to take?

It's so stupid, 'Well he may have done something wrong, we're not sure, but instead of treating him in the manner of a suspected criminal- which we should- we're going to keep him from his house instead.'

Utterly barmy. No wonder this scheme was rejected.

The article MmeLindt put here talks about it being rejected because of 'practicalities' about legislation. That says it all.

I imagine it is because of the difficulty with people not wanting to press charges.

With other crimes, the police know that a crime has been comitted, and arrest people suspected of comitting the crime, even if they don't have any evidence at that point.

Whereas in the case of DV, there might be stacks of evidence, but no complaint. So teh police can remove the person, without having to arrest them. I understand that the law was changed to allow police to arrest and prosecute people who comitted DV without the victim lodging a complaint/giving evidence, but I also think that only is done in practive where the police have stacks of other evidence.

So in these cases, they turn up, there is some evidence of violence, but not enough to make an arrest, and the victim says they don't want to press charges - this would enable the police to do something.

So at the moment, the police turn up, the victim is bruised and bloodied, but won't press charges, the police have to leave.

The way I understand it is that if it was the umpteenth time they had attended, and the victim had ended up in hospital before, and it was very very obvious what was going on, then the police would be able to arrest and charge and prosecute even without the cooperation of the victim.

I would imgaine there must be a "gap" otherwise this wouldn't have been mooted in the first place.

So how do the police know the victim had ended up in hospital before?
They can look at her hospital records- can they just do this? Genuine question.
So presumably because she doesn't want to press charges or make a fuss, she is not going to tell them if she's been hospitalised before, is she? I'd have thought she wouldn't have to tell them.

I think it vital that people are protected against violence- be it in the home or not, but silly schemes like this help nobody.

I think that when a hospital admits someone who they think has been attacked they have to tell the police? I am sure that doctors have a duty to inform the authorities if they think someone is at risk/has been abused.

That's what all this "joined up" approach is supposed to be - and where it's failed in cases like Baby P - with people not telling their suspicions when they were supposed to/not acting on them and so on.

Certainly if they are getting called to a house by eg neighbours over and over and have been contacted by the hosp and told mrs x has been in an alarming number of times with broken bones, then they start to have enough evidence for a conviction even without the cooperation of the victim.

That's right, most feminists seek equality for men and women, they are united by a belief that things are not currently equal between the sexes. If you believe that women get a raw deal in all kinds of ways because of prejudice, and you are trying to work to change that, why should you drop everything to campaign for men's services? I don't get it.

No-one's saying that male victims of violence suffer less, or that they don't deserve support. It's just that as a feminist (speaks slowly) my priority is to work for women, you see? Because they are the bottom of the heap in every country in the world, because 1 in 4 women gets raped and because they own less than 1% of the world's property, to name just a few reasons.

I will support, as I said above, but it is not my flaming duty to cater for men first. Do it yourself.

ElephantsAndMiasmas You know what, the attitude you express above is that of a man defending the reason why he believes the 'boys' club' way of doing things is the correct way.

I trust you believe his view is correct, too.

If you don't give a s* about men, fair enough. Just don't expect them to care about women. I sincerely hope that you don't.