Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Clare's Law and Why Some Women/Men Don't Want to Hear About a Violent Past

9 replies

arranbubonicplague · 30/11/2018 15:22

The BBC could have framed this better but this is an interesting discussion of Clare's Law: Does your partner have a violent past? Are you at risk? Clare's Law allows women - and men - to ask these questions of police, who can also use it to offer information to people who have not sought it.

The opening story is an insight into people who accept a partner's version of events in previous violent relationships and therefore reason that the violence won't recur because they won't be like the previous partner.

When the violence did happen again:

When his attacks came to a head and he was arrested, she expected him to admit to police what he had done.
That he didn't was the turning point. When police offered her information under Clare's Law, which she had never heard of, she accepted.
She discovered her partner had told her "nothing like" the full picture.
"My chin hit the floor," she says.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42920020

The later part of it has useful insight from Becky Rogerson:

As domestic abuse charity director Becky Rogerson points out, a visit from police can be dangerous for some women.
The chief executive officer of My Sister's Place in Middlesbrough and interim director of Wearside Women in Need says this makes it difficult for those with coercive and controlling partners to receive help.
"Even if they're not responsible for calling the police, they often get blamed," she says.
"I think a lot of women would be very worried about the police just ringing them and asking to speak about the guy that they are already frightened of."
In Ms Rogerson's experience, if a woman "feels she's not able to escape" it can be "easier not to know".
"They always think, 'if I do something, or if it gets known, then social services are going to remove my children'," she says.
"We hear that over and over and over again - women are always terrified of social services."

OP posts:
PineappleSunrise · 30/11/2018 15:30

It's really important that more people know about Clare's Law. Too many people go into relationships knowing their partner has something dodgy in the background, but have assumed it wouldn't affect them because they're "different" or because they've been told a highly sanitised version of the truth.

arranbubonicplague · 30/11/2018 15:33

If anyone can post about this in Relationships or other relevant parts that would be good. I'm going out to something and won't be able to participate in the thread this evening so didn't feel I could post it elsewhere.

OP posts:
LangCleg · 30/11/2018 15:59

"They always think, 'if I do something, or if it gets known, then social services are going to remove my children'," she says.

And, in some cases, they actually will.

arranbubonicplague · 30/11/2018 16:19

And, in some cases, they actually will.

Agreed, it's the miserable intersection of austerity policies and the status of women and their obligations to children.

The Children's Act was long overdue with its safeguarding provisions but austerity has had a hugely damaging impact on the framework that should protect children because women don't have ready access to refuges, appropriate re-housing, or support.

Women who do know about the partner's violence are in an invidious position with respect to Social Services. Social Services often doesn't have the resources for a nuanced approach and is obviously concentrating on the welfare of the child/ren. Yet Women's Refuges are increasingly underfunded so can't supply the breathing space for whatever support that is needed to slip into place.

The on-going mess of Universal Credit is adding to the difficulties of gathering advance funds to cover the delay in obtaining the payments.

OP posts:
arranbubonicplague · 01/12/2018 19:17

Jessica Eaton quotes Messent (2014) about women who should have done something differently to avoid being murdered by their partners

twitter.com/Jessicae13Eaton/status/1068455711397400576 [comments on the thread continue]

What Maureen Messent wrote:

Battered women are Britain’s holy cows, never to be held accountable for staying with brutal men, never to be told the harm done to children who watch these beatings.

Now we’ve had an inevitable guest appearance of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (in sackcloth and ashes) to apologise that our police forces are failing to protect women from their assailants.

This is less than fair. The women who allow themselves to be used as punch bags are often their own worst enemies.

The death toll of domestic violence – 77 last year, which showed a decline – is shocking for its avoidability and we’re never told how many of the dead refused police advice to leave their attackers once and for all.

www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/news-opinion/maureen-messent-domestic-abuse-against-6918862

Response to Messent's victim-blaming:

www.channel4.com/news/domestic-abuse-birmingham-mail-holy-cows-maureen-messent

OP posts:
HestiaParthenos · 01/12/2018 19:28

I rather doubt police, after advising those women to leave their violent, murderous partners, offered the victims 24/7 police protection, or, barring that, at least a new identity in a faraway city that the abuser would never be able to track down.

And of course, here in feminism chat, we all know that the time when a woman is most at risk of being murdered by her partner after she left him, while is in the process of leaving him, or after she declared her intent to leave him.

If police is advising domestic violence victims to leave their abusive partners, they'd better put the man in prison until the woman has had time to leave the count(r)y and build an existence elsewhere.

arranbubonicplague · 01/12/2018 19:43

Agreed. At the LAWS event in London 30 Nov. one of the speakers was from The Freedom Programme and she spoke about her own experience and what the FP had meant to her and her child.

She was most in danger when she'd made up her mind to leave. The only positive thing that Police intervention did for her was that one of them recommended the FP. It was so hard for that funny, spirited, engaged woman to stand there and tell us how she'd become isolated not just from her friends and family but herself.

I was struck by one of the responses in Eaton's thread that highlights why people who say, "Just leave" have no understanding of the pattern that can play out:

Three weeks after mum told my violent dad to leave our family home, he appeared in the doorway of an upstairs bedroom, just as mum was reading me a bedtime story. I still remember her pleading with him not to kill her, because my sister & I would end up in care

twitter.com/DogLadyUK/status/1068804079525220357

OP posts:
Spottycake · 01/12/2018 22:09

Nothing I can say but Flowers to any woman stuck in this situation. Its hard. I would never say you have to leave because its not as easy as all that, but I’m praying for you that you find your own answer.

arranbubonicplague · 02/12/2018 11:30

twitter.com/FiLiA_charity/status/1067768891286405120

Last week FiLiA, janeclarejones, AliMc83, CathElliott, SophieGTweets, aoifemod, JayneEEgerton, RichardJGarside & GoonerProf shared a roundtable UKHouseofLords discussing Gender-Based Violence. Blackbox666 gave this speech

The speech: filia.org.uk/news/2018/11/27/sally-jackson-at-the-house-of-lords

Starting with the basic need to have somewhere safe to live, when women subjected to domestic abuse reach the point that the only avenue that they can see, is escaping; often only with what they can carry to emergency refuge accommodation, mostly with children in tow, Women’s Aid quote that 60% of those women are refused a place due to lack of bed space. Can you imagine what that feels like for that 60% I’d suggest that fits the very definition of torture. What are their choices?

Sofa surf with someone that their perpetrator probably knows and so risk both theirs and their own safety.

Live on the streets or in a mixed hostel until a place can be found

Return home to the abuser.

Every single day women face these impossible choices. And if that woman has any additional needs, a disability, a mental health issue, a language or cultural need, then her chances of finding suitable accommodation are even less. In the last 5 years we have lost 45% of our specialist Black and Minority Ethnic Women’s services, and let’s face it: there weren’t enough to meet the need 5 years ago. When a woman turns to the state for help in these desperate circumstances, all too often our state says no.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread