Clare's law request

[olivietolivie]

Has anybody ever done a Clare's law request, been invited to a police station for disclosure and it not be a deal breaker? I've got an appointment next week and it just feels strange continuing to be 'normal' around the guy when I imagine it's all going to end next week. Or is it? Would appreciate some views as I feel a bit muddled.

Some people will do almost anything to excuse the most egregious male behaviour, sadly. It's a recurrent theme on this site.

Thank you!! I would also like to add that the entire time, from it happening until the day he got sentenced and went to jail, he was shouting loudly about being false accused. Before I had told even my closest friends what happened I got a message from a relative stranger with a screenshot of them discussing if I was “one of those” women who lie, and how this man had always been lovely to them.

It was made very public because he chose to make it very public. He had loads of people backing him and sending me abuse for over a year. Some people who said “innocent until proven guilty” still believe he’s innocent. People everywhere comment about this situation to me, because they are aware of it before they’ve met me.

It’s an absolute fucking nightmare I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I fully understand why any woman would take their safety and privacy and run rather than face all this and prove what a man did to her. Sadly men take full advantage of this every day.

My point is mostly that a man telling you he has false allegations against him before you found out elsewhere is NOT a plus in his favour. It does not imply any innocence. There’s a lot of research backing this too. Another way to control the narrative.

Yes. You're entitled to your opinions, just as others are entitled to tell you they're hogwash.

If you post on a public forum you open your comments up to public scrutiny, discussion, and sometimes disagreement. It's how discussion sites work.

I've had enough comments this morning telling me I'm wrong and you're right, I was just speaking from my experience, I'm not a bad or wicked person, I don't condone DV, I've seen and experienced some DV, I don't push women towards it, I don't fly a flag for the male population, I just commented and then got told i'm full of shit, that I shouldn't comment and whatever else, frankly feel bullied for commenting, wish I hadn't

I'm sorry. If you feel bullied I genuinely apologise, that wasn't my intention. But it can be very dangerous to downplay and minimise this sort of behaviour, particularly if a woman is at risk. That's the point I'm trying to get across.

This is absolutely nothing to do with you being 'allowed' to share your experience. You have picked out a couple of examples of his behaviour and made excuses for them and ignored the rest, based on something which happened to someone you know, to give dangerous and irresponsible advice.

A CL disclosure is not made lightly. If you don't want to potentially do real damage then please, please educate yourself about domestic abuse.

Feel like i'm being bullied now

He could have filmed her friends because she said she was out with him and he was proving she wasn't - not everything is black and white.

The op just said "filming her friends".

That could be literally anything.

And your scenario seems extremely unlikely. And what exactly do you mean .... "She was out with him and he was proving she wasn't". ...what??!!

I know a woman whose ex filmed her friends .... By putting a hidden camera in an airing cupboard of her bathroom while she was having uni mates to visit.

It could be anything.

You're not being bullied.

People are naturally responding to your minimising - when you actually have zero idea what happened.

When someone (or possibly more than one). Is reporting incidents to the police, it's more likely than not likely that they're not the most minimal, harmless case scenario.

Neither do you?

I'm not minimising and depicting them as not "serious" without knowing exactly what they are.

There's risk in that.

There's no risk in assuming they are serious and acting accordingly.

You're encouraging a woman (and child sooner or later) to take unwise risks.

That is irresponsible.

You can choose to take on board what I'm saying to you, and learn more about this so that your responses are better informed in the future, or you can choose to ignore it because you don't like that it makes you uncomfortable.

@wineandagoodbook

i think this is a fair response to why people are arguing with you on this post. Yet you’re not addressing why people are concerned about you minimising the disclosures. If you feel bullied stop replying.

But no one should be encouraging someone, especially with a child, to ignore red flags because you don’t know this man, don’t vouch for him. Maybe he allegations aren’t true, but without a crystal ball it’s not really a chance worth taking and people feel you’re validating her ignoring those red flags

While I agree entirely with this, OP hasn't stated whether he had confirmed that he had done that. If he did admit to it and that was part of the CL declaration, definitely run a mile.

If, however, it was an accusation that was unfounded as part of the "not enough evidence" it is potentially feasible that it was part of a malicious accusation by the ex.

Given the amount of time OP has been seeing this guy though, personally I think I would let it fizzle out if I were in her position.

That may be unfair on him if he is entirely innocent, but you can only look after yourself.

Strange how many violent men with massive red flags on the police system seem to have been victims of women's malicious and unfounded allegations, innit?

And an unfounded allegation as to filming and ransacking computers, no less. That one seems to be a stretch of the imagination: why not just allege he'd hit her?

Then there's that strange, indefinable old phenomenon known as the gut instinct. It's this that led OP to make the Clare's Law request in the first place. Coincidence?

Someone further up said that any unproven allegation wouldn’t show up- and computers bring their own evidence, so if that was in the disclosure then it happened.

My ex hit me, emotionally broke me and after every single time I reported to the police and every single time it was my word against his. It was dropped he used it as justification that he is innocent and the cycle continues.

This man has a number of allegations at his door and you have a child. Don't minimise what you heard, hear it. This is a person to walk away from.

Isn't domestic abuse weird?

I can't think of another crime where people say to the victims, "were you really burgled?" or "did that car really run you over?" and look for other reasons, or suggest the burgled person/run over person was making it up maliciously!

Why would all these women make up allegations of domestic abuse?

Our patriarchal society is far more comfortable with the unsubstantiated assumption that women lie, are devious, and make up serious allegations against men to ruin their lives for the sheer hell of it, than that a far too large, perhaps disproportionate number of men are violent, predatory or abusive. I've learned this lesson at significant personal cost far too many times in my life.

The statistics alone for violent and sexual crime - including the heartbreaking numbers of women killed or seriously hurt by their partners or former partners - testify to how warped this misconception is - and there's a good deal of evidence out there showing exactly how and why it's become so skewed. If you're female and make a complaint of this nature society will shout you down, fail to take you seriously, assure you that it's not so bad as you know it really is, or tell you that you're jumping on the bandwagon and if you couldn't speak out after a set period of time then no one is interested in what you have to say. (Cf. the tidal wave of responses pushing back against #MeToo).

Meantime, 2-3 women are killed by men per week. If this were happening to any other demographic there would be an outcry.

The other way around:

One time but not the only time; when I was physically attacked by my ex wife she said 'now go to the police and they will laugh in your face'. Back then (early 90s) one needed a reason for divorcing their husband/ wife, I divorced my wife for adultery, but really I needed to get away from her craziness. I could cope with her and a one off shag (but maybe there were more, I suspected there was), but not her madness, in many ways her mental cruelty towards me was worse than the violent stuff. I don't know how many men are subjected to violence, gaslighting, controlling and coercive behaviour but it does happen.

That's interesting, @tiger2691. How does your "women can be abusers" story help the OP, who's been warned by the police that her new boyfriend has a history of partner abuse?

If you need to discuss your experience, perhaps you'd like to start a new thread for the purpose.

I mean this kindly OP, but don’t let your passive attitude be your downfall.
You may still be with him because you’re still weighing everything up. Of course you know him, and we don’t.

However, in your gut you felt it necessary to get a search on him.

Now I am older than you and have been around the block a few times, but I have never felt the need to do this. If I was in the early stages of a relationship and alarm bells started to ring, my gut would tell me to run, so I would. I have. I am self aware and confident enough to set the bar high. You need to get to that point. For me, the thought of doing a search, regardless of its outcome would be futile, because the damage would be done already.

Don’t settle. You would probably benefit from time alone, and counselling for your self esteem. After all, it’s been a few months, and the first few months should be easy. You and your child deserve better. No man is worth this amount of soul searching.

A fair few of the replies in this thread are not necessarily helpful to the OP, hopefully my earlier one was.

One time but not the only time; when I was physically attacked by my ex wife she said 'now go to the police and they will laugh in your face'

How would they do that if there were marks on you and not her?

And when you say "not the only time"; you fall into the same category as women on here who report an incident of physical abuse and are advised it will likely happen again and to leave. You can always leave. You probably didn't even the financial dependance etc issues in leaving that most women do.

Back then (early 90s) one needed a reason for divorcing their husband/ wife, I divorced my wife for adultery, but really I needed to get away from her craziness.

You either didn't have good legal council or you didn't read much online - because you could have divorced her for unreadable behaviour (if that was the main reason) and you could have cited adultery as one of the examples of unreasonable behaviour, without having to prove it.
Adultery required proof and was more difficult to divorce on.

Unreasonable behaviour, with adultery as one example, would have been easier and more truthful.

Strange.

I'm not sure why ; she is trying to decide whether to keep seeing a guy who's been noted, by at least one woman, to have recorded her friends without their permission/consent and to have accessed her personal IT accounts and removed digital items without her permission/consent.

I have no idea what that decision has to do with the fact that your ex wife cheated on you and attacked you and told you the police wouldn't believe she attacked you. And you believed her.

This man's record is nothing to do with any physical attacks.

You are also, for reasons best known to yourself, bringing in scenarios of abuse victims being desuaded" from reporting abuse ....whereas we don't know if the op's bf desuaded anyone else from reporting abusive/criminal behaviour; all we know is that at least one reported it.

I haven't a clue how any of your points relate to this scenario.

Is it just that you want to bring "some women abuse too" into every thread about male abuse ...for your own agenda?

Or are you saying that you think the op's bf's ex (if only one woman made the reports) abused him but he never reported any of it because she told him they wouldn't believe d and then she made malicious allegations against him (weird things like recording her friends and accessing her PC without consent) - which the police never investigated before noting on his file?

Did your ex make malicious allegations against you? You don't appear to have mentioned that. What were they?

And even if she did, what percentage of allegations/reports do you therefore think you can accurately & reasonably assume are false?

What about male false accusations - like the chap who, after reporting his wife to the police for hitting him - murdered her avd their young daughter with a shotgun? What a victim

What percentage of males reports of abuse should we assume to be false based on him?