Rob - dead? No, no, he's, er, resting. He's just pining for the Canadian plains. As Helen is taken into custardy, discuss the Archers here.

[PseudoBadger]

24 hours for 1 thread!!

They wouldn't have shown all the nuts and bolts re the lawyer, there wasn't time. I suspect Pat and Tony organised the lawyer, someone told Helen and she was asked whether she wanted him, at that point she changed her mind.

I think they could do it without Henry speaking on air - they could easily convey what he said via other characters. I really hope they go down that route because he's so dreadful.

careerist this is part of what I can't stop banging on about!

SOC: We've consulted with the experts, we're playing this true to life, we're making an important point to a bunch of listeners whose lives are all Boden and Waitrose and who don't know anything about real life.

Oh, em, actually not. We're recreating Eastenders on the radio and we can if we like cos it's a soap and I'm brilliant and look how many people are getting in touch! I like the angry ones best, what can we do to make them even more irate!*

*This is my imagined version of his thinking.

I have no idea what's going on any more.

I can't really see Henry being much of a useful witness at all: 1, he seems oblivious to what's going on most of the time; 2, he's only a child and I assume that courts can not put too much weight on what a child says in understanding what two adults were doing to each other - he'll just confirm that Daddy was cross, Mummy shouted and maybe that Mummy had a knife in her hand.

Link. 100 women per year as opposed 30 men. Though this quote with regard to men could easily apply to Helen.

"‘Many men who experience domestic abuse from a current or former partner find it difficult to get support; not least because it can be hard for men to acknowledge and discuss their experiences. This can be due to any number of reasons, including love for a partner, embarrassment or shame and concern for any children, or simply not knowing where to go."

oh and all the leading, closed questions to kirsty about Rob being violent. TOTAL BULLSHIT

Sorry link

www.domesticviolencelondon.nhs.uk/1-what-is-domestic-violence-/25-domestic-abuse-against-men.html

Elendon it's the simply not knowing where to go aspect of that quote that I was really hoping they were going to address over time, having set the scene for the last two years. That's the role I'd hoped WA were there to fulfil alongside the sws.

oh and finally.

a DS interviewing a GBH suspect ? Borsetshire Police obviously are totally unaffected by government cuts because that just Would. Not. Happen in real life. And also wildly improbable that there would be a second officer in the interview room

Interesting elendon - I wonder what the proportion male/female perpetrators is for those 130

The stat I was interested in was number of abusers killed by their victim vs victims killed by their abuser (which is 130 per your link).

On my phone so can't do much googling!!

I thought the police bit was shit too and definitely got more than a hint of lesbian plot about the questioning of Kirsty.

Gruach I though there was a familiar voice at the station...thought it was the actor who plays Jess , not sounding quite so bright and twinkly though.

Sorry - read it properly now. So around 110 of those murders are committed by men?and around 9 are by women killing their abuser

Helen seems utterly blind to the situation she is in. Question for the lawyers out there - how common is it for someone cautioned to refuse a solicitor, especially when they thought they had killed their husband? I'm relieved that Pat & Tony seem to believe Kirsty without questioning, supported by Tom who finally raised his doubts.

Dadx3 actually young children's evidence can be critically important because they usually just say what has happened, having little understanding of the events. They don't bring their previous experiences with them and if a 5 year old said "Daddy called mummy a useless whore like every other woman" and tried to hit mummy with a big stick" then where have they got that from ? It's out of their normal experience as a small child so more credible

So according to those figures roughly 100 women a year are killed by their abusers, and just under 10 men a year are killed by the women they have abused.

That's actually more than I was expecting.

So they have gone for the statistically least likely outcome as suspected

So it looks from those stats that approx 10 men per year are killed by women they have been abusing (with 10 killed by male partners and 10 killed in unspecified circumstances (by women who had been abusing them?)). So when a man is abusing a women, it is ten times more likely that he will end up killing her than vice versa.

We really need Sarah Lancashire a la Happy Valley in there asap. Shall we start a MN campaign? She would immediately see the domestic abuse, do blinding interviews, get to the bottom of everything immediately and have it all sorted by teatime. Then we could get onto more interesting things like when to plant out our brassicas and chicken diseases.

Are you telling me Vango that every person in a relationship should know about WA?

I can just see the marriage vows now. Thank you. Now here are some leaflets on domestic violence. I urge everyone attending to pick one up.

A stat it doesn't show is how many of the deaths were suicide? I'm thinking of cases where the abuser kills the victim and then themselves

Well hang on he ain't dead yet.....

There has been a case where the evidence of a 4 year old was accepted, R v B in 2010. I won't link to the judgment as it's a pretty unpleasant child abuse case. However, that was a case where the child was giving evidence of what happened to her, not what she saw happen to someone else.

Is Henry really a child actor?

As opposed to a chat-bot?

Women's Aid are coming across a bit Messianic, a bit Camila B. It is perfectly possible to leave a DV situation without handing yourself over to a charity, and there are many sources of advice in addition to WA.