News

'Stop Criminalising Survivors' Campaign

29/08/2024

We support the Centre for Women's Justice 'Stop Criminalising Survivors' campaign and welcome the screening of its film on this issue before the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence and Abuse.

The criminalising of victims of coercive control is an issue that is starting to come into the public consciousness. The use of counter-allegations by determined controlling people has been a tool of control for far too long. The failure of the criminal justice system to recognise or acknowledge the trauma caused by control and abuse has criminalised those who retaliate or defend themselves.

Jane has been involved in homicide trials where judges have openly said that coercive control is a matter of common sense with no need for the jury to hear expert evidence.

If coercive control were a matter of common sense, where everyone understood it, then why are homicide reviews repeatedly recommending that professionals are properly trained in recognising it and recognising how it can lead to serious violence and homicide? Why do meta-analyses and evaluations of risk assessment find that knowledge around coercive control is lacking? Why do we have a 1.3% conviction rate for coercive controlling behaviour? Why did Clare Wade KC find disparities in sentencing for victims of control who kill their abusers and abusers who kill their victims? Why is it only in the last twelve months that coroners are recognising the role of coercive control when women take their own lives because of it?

It's a real and dangerous issue that is a serious and ongoing injustice. Harriet Wistrich, the director of the CWJ, points out that we recognise that people may respond to perceived danger to themselves with the householder's defence, but not that a woman subject to years of violence, abuse and even torture, may be pushed to homicide.

There is so much evidence that coercive control is dangerous and traumatising that we can't keep ignoring it. We are empowering the dangerous and criminalising the victims. It's the dangerous we want in prison, not their victims.

You can watch the film on the CWJ website here: https://www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/stop-criminalising-survivors