Who will include the women most in need of protection, into the Domestic Violence Bill?
here's a room full of elephants, which legislators and worthy groups ignore. Only a professional lawyer could be taken seriously by the fellow lawyers intending to represent women experiencing every kind of domestic abuse, but excluded from protection by the definition.
There is limited precedent in an old Appeal court/High court(?) ruling that D.V. does apply to those who are abused within their home by persons having access to them inside the dwelling, yet not falling within the prescribed 'list of permitted assailants'. It was ruled that people can claim they needed to flee domestic abuse, as a reason to leave their homes. They are not to be called 'intentionally homeless' therefore (in the case before him) the judge ruled they could apply to the council as homeless and could claim Housing Benefit.
He declared there could be various reasons for non-related and non-partnered people to live in the same house, thus providing the opportunity for one to carry out abuse of another, while sharing a residence, not as a commercial relationship, but in 'such situations as, but not restricted to, students in a flat share'.
It was a really old case, Shelter would know, or a Housing Benefit specialist. The massed ranks of Domestic Violence campaigners either don't know or care about anything except the stereotype in their imagination, of a 'personal relationship' domestic abuser..
Somewhere along the line, someone involved with immigrant problems has brought to their attention other domestic situations where women cannot escape the place they live, or the person who has unfettered access to abuse them there.
As a result, D.V. law can now apply to immigrants, abused where they live but not by partners. This is on the grounds they may often live precariously and under the official records radar (exactly as non-immigrant women do, though the latter are effectively 'deemed non-existent women', by the D.V. machinery).
They are 'sofa surfing' or in unregulated sub-lets, in crammed accommodation, or in fear of whoever has power over them. They won't be able to go to the police or sometimes even the hospital, because afterwards they would need to be at equal risk as women asleep in shop doorways. This situation applies to lots of non-immigrants, but they have nobody to even mention them, let alone advocate for them to be included as liable to D.V.
Precarious housing situations may be for a multitude of reasons, especially those fearing for their lives, for life, having been previously traced by dangerous exes. (N.B. No, tripping along to a court for a bit of paper is not the equivalent of a stab-proof vest, and abused women have learned it is unsafe to provoke a hate-filled habitual attacker, even if they knew where a mythical group of legal enforcers could find him. The only, the single, only, safe thing to do is to hide, to not appear on official records, and to be as invisible as possible and keep moving.
No. No. No. women could NOT retrospectively achieve a court conviction for years of abuse never dealt with at the time, and no, no, no, even if they could, a man who has been thwarted in any way by a mere prey object will not meekly desist from the woman-hatred. )
There are a multiplicity of other reasons why a woman may become precariously, and usually unofficially, housed. (And not only junkies and alcoholics and mental patients encounter insuperable difficulties. So too do older women and disabled women and physically ill women, and women whose life circumstances have changed, and even still-married women with absent husbands, who cannot because of the technicalities of legislation apply for benefits, nor afford (or obtain) a rented home to care for a disabled child. )
As that judge ruled, student flat-sharers are not the only unrelated adults who can be domestically abused by others with access to their home. Yes, immigrants can be. But so too can non-immigrants. Older women and disabled women, in particular, are peculiarly vulnerable to abuse pretty much by all and sundry who can get inside the same place of residence. It is easy for a non-official 'carer', or a non-official 'landlord', or 'co-sharer', or even a neighbour or ill-intentioned family member or 'friend' to do anything they choose.
The lack of private rental of any kind means it can be near-impossible to get a wheelchair accessible place to live, and few disabled or old people have the current employer's proof needed to rent officially.
(Remember the Bournemouth Bus shelter couple? He was a wheelchair user, they were in their 90's, and unable to find private accommodation while also banned from applying to the council, because they still had 'too much' life savings, and according to the rules, ought to go and get a mortgage or buy a place for cash for a few thousand pounds, even though their savings are instead of, not as well as, a private pension (yet another legal anomaly))
I should not need to point out that financial coercion, violence, rape and any other kind of torment are carried out on people who are vulnerable and cannot escape, not just 'sexy young wives'. One of the recent (barely mentioned) deaths was an elderly woman so violently raped by a nurse (with a history of similar offences ) that she died of extreme internal injury. "Bit of fun on a night shift", perhaps, or rape-old-women for fun and profit, just as you rape children or babies, by filming the assault ?
Note that there's c.c.t.v. by law in English slaughter houses, but not in care homes or institutions where the most extremely helpless humans are incarcerated. And, the D.V. law takes the trouble to specifically EXclude them from protection, though of course they are far more in need of it than was the woman M.P. who brought Parliament to tears, telling about her boyfriend's coercive control.
In towns, there must be millions of 'hidden homeless', mainly women, since women cannot risk the shop doorway solution so favoured by the men served by the plethora of 'homeless' charities. It is known (but ignored) that hidden homeless out-number visibly homeless, and it is known that women are the hidden ones. By any logic, the hidden homeless women, even non-immigrants, are precariously housed and liable to be terrorised by anyone who gets access to their official or unofficial home.
Please, will some lawyer contact the appropriate colleagues before the final rubber stamping of the D.V. bill, to include the excluded, by changing the definition of 'permitted abusers' within the home?