Should women be able to check partners' records?

[moonferret]

I've just noticed this article in the Mail.
Do you feel that it's reasonable, or should men have the same "equal" rights? Or are criminal records (where they exist) supposed to be confidential as I do?
No marks for the first person referring to it as the Daily Fail rather than offering anything constructive!

This thread is pretty depressing. To answer your main question, I feel that as previously mentioned, women often do know of a history of violence. By the point at which they are in a relationship - a disclosure of this sort is too late anyway. I knew my ex beat the mother of his child publically while she was pregnant. I stayed with him for five years - and nearly lost my life.

As for picking 'garden variety' DV over having all of your money nicked, I think you're very much mistaking a one off assault with DV of the 'patriarchal terrorism' strain. I lost my home, and all of my belongings, but feel a lot more sad when contemplating my missing front tooth and broken nose. Do some reading and get your facts straight, before winding people up who have been through some of the most harrowing and disruptive experiences you could never imagine.

Should men then be allowed to find About weather a woman has had a child removed by ss or if their children are on the at risk register if you start down this path you end up Down a very bad road

To be honest what will save women is getting to know someone before embarking on a sexual relationship I am always shocked how quickly women on the dv threads become invalid then pregnant by their oh

maypole - men and women will be able to find out if a partner has a history of violence. There's no discrimination. So your analogy doesn't apply. And even if you were to argue people should be able to check whether a partner has had children removed by social services, that would apply to men and women too.

Your argument is flawed because you seem to suggest that women are the victims of male violence but are the perpetrators of violence against children. That's simply not true. In the overwhelming majority of cases of violence, men are the aggressors and women and/or children are the victims. But not always and male victims deserve as much support as anyone else.

I can't see if working personally. How many people have suffered abuse and never reported it? How many abusive people would be able to talk themselves out of it with 'she was after revenge' etc etc? What would stop someone using a false name and therefore being clean? How many woul continue bad relationships with a false sense of security of a clean record? Once you have found out the person has a violent past how do you end the relationship and how do you protect yourself from potential violence? Will the victim be blamed for violence if the check is not taken up?

I think the thing to come out of this case would be that the police/CPS need to take domestic violence and stalking seriously. They also need to think carefully about bailing those who have been arrested and hand out tougher sentences. The headlines that say this law would have saved her are wrong. She had already ended the relationship what more could she have done even if she had known his past.

Lil - she possibly wouldn't have got into a relationship with him in the first place.

And yes, it would be great if the police/CPS/magistrates/judges and lawyers were all properly trained and took domestic violence extremely seriously. But current government policy is going in the opposite direction. They are pulling legal aid funding so you won't get legal aid to help with housing or residence/contact. And in a terrible Catch-22 you won't get the very limited legal aid that will still be available unless you have a court order - but how do you get a court order in the first place with no legal aid?

Colleague of mine has been making representations to the government about this and she says they are just woefully ignorant about domestic violence - they don't have a clue that restricting access to legal aid for housing could leave victims at risk, because they will be unable to find anywhere else to live. Seems blindingly obvious to me and I'm sure to most people with an ounce of common sense, but clearly not to wealthy MPs who have no personal experience of this and can't be bothered to listen to people who do.

But surely you need to have some sort of relationship before being given access to someone's criminal history? If it was just someone you thought about dating there would potentially be far too many requests and abuse to gain information about people. What would stop me going to the police and saying 'I quite fancy Mr X but before I go out with him can I have a criminal record check' even if I had no plans to go out with him or had a malicious reason for looking in to his past?

Alice, I'd answer your post to me but to be honest I've no idea what you meant. I need shorter words. Preferably two syllables or less please.

LilBB, that's one of the main stumbling blocks. How do you define when it is an appropriate time to give someone access to another's criminal record? And how do you make sure there are checks in place to ensure security so any random person can't check you or I.

I mean let's face it, does anyone think it's appropriate for a lady on a dating site to run a check on a prospective date before she goes? How about on the third date? If so how would police verify that? What if she's slept with him a few times and it's now three months? Again, how would a policeman verify that? Is that even something I want a policeman having to spend time doing???

Maypole, it seems to me that you are confused. The reason that this law is being proposed is that DV tends to effect the partner of the perpetrater. Just as a fraud conviction will be disclosed to a bank enquiring about a perspective employee, then DV convictions should be divulged to enquiring new partners of that person.

Your analogy regarding SS involvement with children does not apply to a partner, after all, no social worker is going to come in and take the partner into care because of something his GF did in the past.

You say that you are always shocked at how quickly a woman is made invalid and then pregnant by perps of DV. This can be remedied by increasing your learning.

lol at moonferret's outdated notion that only women can be gold-diggers

Just because it's stories about women that the media slurps up and regurgitates

God, the amount of women who are supporting a family on their wages, or more often on her credit cards, is unreal

I agree with everything edam has said, as usual, except this:

"Colleague of mine has been making representations to the government about this and she says they are just woefully ignorant about domestic violence - they don't have a clue that restricting access to legal aid for housing could leave victims at risk"

Of course they know. They're not completely thick. They just don't care.

Although, to be fair I do think that if a woman has got it together enough to do background checks on her partner, then she might as well put that energy into leaving him and save herself a load of bother.

For women who have already been ground down by a man's abuse , doing a background check is useless, because they already know what he's like. And if a woman doesn't know about her current man's past, but is suspicious, (presumably because of his behaviour) then encouraging her to do a background check is strange. She should be encouraged to throw in the towel.

In fact, come to think about it, isn't this proposal just saying that women should consider it normal to be suspicious about their partners?

I agree with you sukra my sister was dating a guy who she knew who had been to jail he has five children whom he dose not see one girl he made miss carry by punching her in the side.

The girl approached my sister to warn her even his parents won't see him

Fast forward 5 years she has one child by him who he is not allowed to see why because he beat her up so bad one night see can no longer see colour out of one eye and ran off with my niece

H got 1 year for this now not being funny if the woman whom unborn child he child couldn't pursued her do you really think seeing his crb would

We tried to get her to stop seeing him the very least not to have a baby with him,his own parents asked her to consider a termination so she wouldn't be tied to him

It won't work women who date damaged men are often very damaged themselves their are women who get out of a relationship straight away when it goes bad but I am sad to sad many of these women pretty much know their not getting a catch when they team up with a guy whose either just out of jail or has a sting of children by different women.

Thanks Sakura. You'd think they'd know but my colleague honestly says she was shocked that they are really ignorant. Not a subject where they've ever bothered to do any thinking and they certainly aren't prepared to start now. They were very hostile to the people who work in this area who were trying to tell them what the impact of their policies will be.

My Dad tells a story of dealing with the permanent secretary, i.e. the top civil servant, in the Dept. of Transport. My Dad was presenting some proposals. The top civil servant seriously turned to my Father, and in a note of triumph at having spotted the flaw in my Dad's proposals, said 'Ah, but you can't get a train from Derby to Bournemouth (or wherever it was), you'd have to go to London and out again'. My Dad said he was so shocked at the man's ignorance that he couldn't reply for several seconds. This man was in charge of national transport policy but hadn't realised you can get trains to go between any two points on the network, they don't all go to London!

AliceLiddle, edam - there is plenty of empirical evidence for women engaging in 'intimate partner violence' and also for killing their spouses. My lit. searching foo is failing me atm regards the homicide stats but I think in the last paper I read, you have 120-ish men killing their wives for every 100 women killing their husbands. 'Lesser' violence is more equal, although women do suffer injury more for fairly obvious reasons.

I can't find what I would consider the best recent paper on this, but if you're able to access it, this one does a good job:
www.springerlink.com/content/r563117g364151p5/

p.s. the point being that not only are some men victims of relationship terrorism (as opposed to rare physical aggression) but that we have to consider all forms of partner aggression in order to know how best to deal with it and protect victims. And to claim that those few men who are murdered (not in self-defense) deserve less protection seems a rather unplesant attitude.

yeah, and? The point of this thread is to debate whether people should have access to their partner's records. It's not a male/female issue - men will be able to check their partners if they wish.

No-one as far as I can see has said men deserve less protection. But it is rather wearing when every ruddy mention of domestic violence triggers special pleading from people claiming equal victim status for men. There are male victims, but violence is overwhelmingly carried out by men (including men who attack male partners). And not just domestic violence either - all forms of violence are perpetrated far more commonly by men than by women. It is a plain fact that almost two women a week are murdered by partners or ex-partners and the same does not apply in reverse.

It's as if every thread about racism was greeted by people saying 'just as many white people are victims'. Clearly white people can be victims but it would be ridiculous to pretend that for decades, if not more, the vast majority of victims of racism have been from ethnic minorities.

Well the argument seemed to go "will it be both sexes able to access?" "Yes but that may not be good because men could use that to play the system and we're trying to save women's lives here" to paraphrase very roughly. I wasn't trying to derail the argument about the possiblity of seeing criminal records but rather respond to a specific assertion.

Anyway, my stats were out of date, (80s when there was more parity in spousal homicide). Having now found my favourite recent review which deals with all forms of violence nice and systematically, the latest data it has from Canada and the US is showing a 20:80 female:male perpetration rate for spousal homicide (vs violence which is more equal). Table below.

So (extrapolating from north america here) one man every fortnight is murdered by his partner. Not that I think this potential legislation would change that anyway.

Canada, 2003 (Statistics Canada, 2005)
23%
Fiji, 1982-1992 (Adinkrah, 2000)
14%
U.S. Supplemental Homicide Reports, U.S. 1976-1985 (Mercy & Saltzman, 1989)
44%
U.S. Supplemental Homicide Reports, U.S.,1998 (Rennison & Welchans, 2000)
38%
U.S. 2009 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010)
20%
U.S. Supplemental Homicide Reports, for African Americans 1985-87 (Plass, 1993)
51%
U.S. Chicago, 1965-1996 (Breitman, Shackelford, & Block, 2004)
48%
Median
38%

yeah, but those are North American figures. I would expect significant differences between US and UK as access to guns is completely different, amongst any other issues, so IIRC the homicide rate is much higher in the US (although not Canada, I think - Canadians seem to have similar access to guns but to be much more responsible about it).

Find me the data for the UK and if it says a man is killed by a female partner every fortnight, I'll be surprised.

Is this legal? Surely convictions are confidential. What about violent women? Can men do the same? It sounds a step to far for me.

It would be legal if it were made law. But that ignores whether it would be an effective law. Like a lot of things that sound like a good idea... 'Sarah's Law' being another example... they either fail to address the real problem, are impractical or they create unintended consequences. The woman highlighted in this story didn't die because she didn't know the man she had had a relationship with had a criminal past. She died because when she reported him to the police for violent behaviour, they didn't deal with the complaint effectively.

Exactly Cogito. Lovely summary.

Sometimes we have to ask ourselves is the answer really yet another law?

What about rehabilitation? Or are people who are violent a lost cause and remain violent for ever? Balance the right to know vs the right to be able to move on into a normal life. If people never have that hope because everyone will know everything about everybody and never give them a chance, then how can they hope to be rehabilitated?

I don't see why person A's rehabilitation is more important than person B's right to make an informed decision about their personal safety. Both are possible - the law might even prompt person B to tell future partners about their past and explain what they've done to change their attitudes and behaviour. If not, the right to check would give people the chance to get away before it goes too far.

Is there any reliable evidence that rehabilitation works?

As far as I understood it, rehabilitation was just a way of making room for more prisoners, and of letting men off for committing serious crimes.

maypole

"H got 1 year for this "
It's so awful that a man would get a measly 1 year for making a woman miscarry a child by beating her so badly she loses her colour vision permanently.
The male "justice" system makes me vomit. It's all about protecting men's right to commit violence against women.

ONe year. Fucking hell. This is my face now

Makes you want to laugh at all the "pro-life" men who doN't want women to have abortions. Domestic violence increases when a woman falls pregnant, and often she loses the baby because of it. These "pro-life" men should work on making sure men aren't doing this.
But that would defeat the pro-life argument, wouldn't it. They don'T ACTUALLY give a fuck about the lives of unborn children (and certainly not about the lives of born children)-- they just care about controlling women.