Domestic Abuse Law in the News

Yesterday Labour announced that it is their intention, should they gain power in the next election, to bring in a new law that would prevent abusive partners from avoiding prosecution.

Under current laws, offenders can apparently avoid prosecution by using a "community resolution" whereby they apologise to their victim, pay for any damages and so on, and walk away without so much as a police caution.

According to data compiled by Labour, in 2013 there were 3,305 uses of community resolutions for domestic violence - an increase of more than 250% since 2009.

The police argue that community resolution is only used for first time offenders, where they have admitted guilt and the victim's feelings have been considered. Also it's important to remember that the definition of "domestic violence" encompasses anything violent that happens in or around the home. An example I heard used on the radio was a situation where a couple split up, and the man is upset and angry and breaks the wing mirror off the woman's car. It's classed as domestic violence under the law, but he has never been violent before, and so an agreement is made that rather than prosecute him, he will just pay for the wing mirror to be replaced.

Sounds reasonable, right? 

Except, how many of these are cases where it was a first offence were just cases where it was the first reported offence?

How many of these 3,305 cases were incidents where the victim was still partly under the abuser's spell, not really sure what was going on, had been made to feel guilty for getting the police involved in the first place? 

I could lose my job over this, my children will go into care, you'll be responsible for having my children taken away from me; you know how much I love my children; how could you do this to me? How could you do this to my children?  Don't worry though, we can fix this; just tell the police you'll accept an apology and we'll go right back to how things were.

I can tell you from my own experience that it took me a long while to realise, and admit to myself, that what I had gone through was abuse. An abusive person is very good at getting right inside of your head, to the point that a single look or gesture can change what you say or think. They can make you believe that you are in the wrong, even as you're standing there with bruises, scared to move for fear of what they will do next. They can make you believe this is just how life is, and that you're just being prissy and stuck up for acting as if it's out of the ordinary.

I am very concerned about a system that allows, or even encourages, an abuser to have any further contact with their victim at all. 

The police had a representative on Radio 4 yesterday. Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan  from Greater Manchester Police said that using community resolutions is "specifically attuned to low level domestic abuse particularly where victims want that course of action."

Hang on... low level domestic abuse? LOW LEVEL? 

Can someone please explain to me exactly what is classed as low level domestic abuse? 

And while we're at it, assuming low level domestic abuse exists, do we assume that taking the perpetrator home and having them apologise to their victim is an end to the entire situation? 

Do we not think that even with supposed low level domestic abuse, there might be some sort of punishment for having called the police? 

For me, the problem is not so much with the police as with society as a whole. 

When we see domestic abuse, there is a lot of victim blaming. People say things like "she gives as good as she gets" or "she deliberately aggravates him." "She wound him up until he blew" or "he's such a gentle person, they must just have incompatible personalities."

When we're not blaming the victim for being abused, we're blaming them for exaggerating the abuse. Personally I have been told such gems as "he's just  bit moody sometimes, you have to learn to live with it" and "men are just like that, that's what a relationship is."  Something else that is mentioned a lot with emotional and mental abuse is "it's not like he hits you." As if it's perfectly fine to call you names, convince you you're worthless, convince you every problem they've ever had is your fault, use children against you, tell you lies, manipulate you. Because as long as you don't have a bruise, it's all fair game. That's just relationships.

That is most definitely NOT just relationships.

How can an abused woman pick up that phone to call the police, when everyone around her is telling her it's no big deal?

How can she make the decision that no, this is not acceptable behaviour and I do not have to put up with it, when the world around her is obsessing over the new 50 Shades movie where a man basically stalks a woman, stops her seeing her friends and forces her into situations she doesn't want to be in? When women all over the world are lusting after an abusive and controlling character in a book, how does the person who is living it stand up and say NO?

How can we as a society pass laws about domestic abuse, when we're not showing your average person on the street what it is? What is the point in that?

One in five 999 calls is for a domestic abuse situation.

I can tell you now, in the majority of abuse cases the police are never called. People suffer in silence, either because they don't realise it's not acceptable, or because they do realise, but they feel there's nothing they can do about it; it is just their lot in life. There is no help to be found. With funding for over-subscribed shelters being cut, no legal aid, no support, what is the point in changing any law, in any way? 

Every week, two women die at the hands of their partners.

I remain unconvinced that Yvette Cooper's headline grabbing, though it comes from the right place and means well, will do anything significant to change that disgusting statistic.

Let's start with educating people. Not just with TV ads, but in schools. Show teenagers, this is not okay. Show police and healthcare professionals and teachers and politicians: this is not acceptable. Make it so that society as a whole does not allow abuse to happen. Otherwise, any law this or any other government passes will fare about as well as Prohibition in the USA: people will just carry on doing it, because they don't see anything wrong.

The Murder of Creativity

I'm reading a book at the moment, called The Element by Sir Ken Robinson. I bought it after seeing a Ted Talk he gave about how schools were killing creativity.

In both the talk and the book, Robinson talks about Gillian Lynne. When she was at school in the 1930s, Lynne's teachers told her parents there must be something wrong with her, because she could never sit still in class. Her mother took her to a doctor, who talked to them both together. Then the doctor stood up and told Lynne, "I'm going out here to speak to your mother alone; we won't be long." He switched the radio on, and left the room with her mother. As soon as they left, Lynne began to dance to the music on the radio. She didn't realise the doctor had stopped with her mother just outside the door of the room. He turned to her mother and told her, "your daughter is not ill; she's a dancer." Her parents moved her to a school of performing arts, and allowed her to nurture her talent. If you're not already, aware, Lynne is actually Dame Gillian Lynne; she is arguably the most successful and famous choreographer in the world, having worked on Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and many more.

I wonder, if Gillian Lynne were a child in school today: would she be moved to a school for performing arts? Or would she be given a label and some Ritalin, and told to sit down and shut up?

I wrote a post earlier this week that seems to have gone a little bit viral. In it I spoke about how I think nurseries should be there for children to have fun, not for certain EYFS targets to be met. I also asked: 

What does government think will happen, if my daughter just gets to play and spend time with her friends until she is 5?

I worry that as a society, we are forcing children into a structured learning environment earlier and earlier. And while yes, they do get to play at nursery/pre-school/school, I would argue that this is a case of too much work and not enough play.

I am fully aware that a good teacher, can make work seem like play. I am aware that many children enjoy learning and find it fun to count to ten or write their own names. 

I am also aware that children can learn an awful lot through just playing without there being any ulterior motive or hidden learning.  Yesterday I posted this photo online, with the caption "I think my child is about to learn a valuable life lesson."

Guess what: yesterday we learned that when you step on a balloon, it either slips out from under your foot, or it pops. Other lessons we have learned lately include: "if you try to stand up while you're under the table, you're going to hurt your head" and "the best place to try out these new pens is in the book, not on the floor." Both are valid life lessons, and I would argue that at the grand old age of 2, all three of these lessons will serve my child better than anything Ofsted might like to dream up.

We seem to put so much importance on reading and writing, on being able to add up, on science. What's important to me is that my child finds what makes her happy, and pursues it with gusto. I don't care if that's being a mathematician or scientist, or an artist. Or a painter and decorator. Surely it takes just as much skill to be able to hang wall paper properly or safely cut down a tree, as it does to solve a particularly difficult equation? It's just using a different set of skills. Some of us are good with numbers; others of us are better with practical things.

How many people leave school believing they are stupid, because they don't find reading and writing as easy as others? How many people consider themselves a failure if they don't pass a GCSE in maths? To me, Gillian Lynne's story should serve as a warning to us all: look what could have happened. Look what the whole world would have missed out on, if it weren't for that one doctor. I would not consider Gillian Lynne a failure or stupid, by any stretch of the imagination.

How many children have already been failed by a system which favours science and maths over art and drama? How many more will be failed by being forced into this strict academic structure of testing and gradings at younger and younger ages?

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Ranty Friday: Nigella

This week, I have mostly been seethingly, bone-tremblingly, confoundingly and inarticulately angry about Nigella Lawson.

We all remember the photo from June this year, outside a restaurant in London. You know, the one where her husband had her by the throat? The one where he also pinched at her nose, and she left in tears. The one that led to his being cautioned for assault? Oh yeah, that one. The one that Charles Saatchi, the grabber, has recently said was him trying to talk some sense into her about her cocaine habit. Lawson says that she incurred this attack simply because she remarked that she was looking forward to becoming a grandmother. In court this week she spoke of how Saatchi had grabbed her by the neck and told her, I am the only person you should be concerned with. I am the only person who should be giving you pleasure.

Just recently, two of the (now ex) couple's former assistants have been on trial for allegedly spending thousands on "expenses" on treats for themselves. But instead of being the trial for fraud of two sisters, it has instead become a witch hunt, a hate campaign by Saatchi via the British media, against Lawson, who didn't speak out to clear his name after those photographs were published in June.

From the day the allegations about Lawson's drug use emerged, some of us have looked at the situation and gone, "hmm, to me that looks a lot like Saatchi trying to get his own back at Lawson." To those of us who have been in abusive relationships, it looked a lot like the sort of thing your controlling, manipulative and abusive ex does when you leave him: he does his very best to make everyone hate you. To vilify you, to turn everyone against you, to ruin you. For me, this means a proportion of the city I live in hates me, and believes I am a vindictive bitch, hell-bent on keeping a loving father from his beloved daughter.

For Nigella Lawson, it means every newspaper, every magazine, every news channel and website, chasing her for a quote, for a story, for an admission.

This week in court, Nigella Lawson stood up and told the truth. I felt immensely touched by her poise and dignity as she held her head high walking purposefully past those cameras into court. I was pleased to see someone with such a high profile standing up against everything being thrown at her. 

I was incensed to find that every story began with "TV cook admits cocaine use." Every news program I have seen, every newspaper, every website.  To me, the story was that a nasty, vindictive man who hadn't got his own way in the summer, was intent on destroying that which he could no longer control.

I really don't care whether Lawson took drugs, or takes drugs. I don't care if she's a regular at Berlusconi's bunga bunga parties, whether she snorts her lines off a midget's head, whether she jacks up heroin between shots of Nigella's Kitchen. None of that would change the fact that Saatchi was caught on camera, with his hand around her throat. You can argue the potential reasons for it, but he still did it. And it was still wrong. In my book, there is never a valid reason for grabbing someone by the throat. In my book, even if Nigella is single handedly bankrolling the Colombian drug lords, she still doesn't deserve any of this. And I am sickened and disgusted by the British media that they are not bright enough to see through Saatchi's lies.

Because what does that say to other women in Lawson's situation?

All over the world right now, women are trying to leave abusive relationships. And they're being told, promised, threatened, "if you leave me, I will finish you." 

These women are looking at the international media right now, and seeing that even a TV cook, even one of the most famous women in the UK, even the seemingly strong, successful Nigella Lawson, cannot escape an abusive relationship unscathed. What hope does that leave for the rest of us?

"Scrounger mum says I want baby number nine!"

I had a call this morning from Nick Ferrari's LBC Radio show about a story in the Daily Star with the above headline. They wanted my comment on it.

I'm still not sure what my comment is to be honest.

It would be easy to say, yes, she gives single mothers and benefit claimants and all the rest of us a bad name... but I think it's probably the paper doing that. After all, they have no doubt paid her for this article, and if they hadn't found her, they would have found someone else to tell the same story. I don't know about you, but if I had 8 kids and no job, and a journalist offered me a few hundred quid for an article 3 weeks before Christmas, I'd probably say "yeah ok, I want another baby and also a new house and an alien in the back yard to go with the giraffe your taxes are already paying for." (extra points if you get the obscure reference to Mark Steele there)

I'm going to stick my neck out here though, and say that even if this particular lady is the scum of the earth, producing babies just to get benefits - she's probably in the minority on that one. Most people don't do that. In that way, this story is unrepresentative.

I think it's easy to vilify this woman, and she's obviously not doing much to help herself in those stakes.

But really, the comment in the piece about "why don't they go after big business instead" is a valid point. Yes, the government could cut this lady's benefits tomorrow and turf her and her 8 kids out onto the street... and their grand total saving would be £40k, maximum. 

If they went after even one company that's dodging taxes or a millionaire with a crafty accountant, don't you think they might make a little more money that way? 

Single mothers, benefit claimants, social housing tenants, people with lots of kids - they're all an easy target for the media, but eradicating them is not going to suddenly change the country, the economy or even the street they live on.

And yes, saying she gets £30k a year in benefits sounds like a lot - but if you divide that up between her and her kids, that's probably not a lot of money per head for food, clothes, Christmas. Yes, she has a lot of kids. Yes, that's probably a bit irresponsible on her part, and certainly in her current situation to say she plans to have more kids (as opposed to "I'd like to, one day, if I can") is a bit daft. But what can you do? You can't make her un give birth, can you? You can't euthanize the children so as to make her housing and benefit needs a little more tidy and convenient... though in all honesty I really wouldn't put that idea past our current government. 

It's easy to get outraged by a story like this; after all, that's what the aim of the piece is. But I think that's just an easy win for all concerned. The paper can't do a story about someone like me - gets her head down, works as hard as she can to provide for her child - because there's no story there. Nobody would read a story about someone who works hard, pays their bills, doesn't deal drugs, doesn't rock up drunk for school pick up. But the sensationalism involved in "your taxes pay me £30k a year for my 8 kids and I'm going to have another! Ha! In your face, tax payers!" is too irresistible isn't it. 

Gingerbread and Absent Fathers

I've written posts about Gingerbread before. They are an organisation that provides advice and support for single parents. I think they're great, and do a lot to help fight the stigma often thrust upon us.

They are currently campaigning against the government's plans to charge people to use the Child Support Agency.

For those lucky enough to have never had dealings with the CSA, this is what happens: you fill in a form and send it to them. They contact the other parent and ask how much they earn. Then they decide how much of those earnings you should get. The absent parent either agrees to send them the money directly, or it can be done through the person's work as an attachment of earnings - meaning the payroll department just take that money out before it's paid, and sends it to the CSA.

The absent parent has until the 21st of the month to get the money to the CSA. They then wait for the money to clear before sending it back out. I think they quote a turnaround of "up to 5 working days" for this. So basically, the absent parent gets paid on the 1st of the month, and you might not see your child's share of that until the end of the month. If the absent parent or their employer doesn't send the money to the CSA, from my experience the CSA doesn't do much about it. They have the power to take people and their employers to court, but they rarely seem to get around to it.

They want to charge for this service.

The proposal is to charge a one-off £20 fee for setting everything up, and then an ongoing 4% of everything going through them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds an awful lot like penalising a parent who has already been very much left holding the baby?

You may notice that I titled this post "Gingerbread and Absent Fathers." This is not because I am stupid enough to think it's only the fathers who are absent, but because of a study that was reported yesterday regarding absent fathers.

Apparently there is an issue with fathers losing contact with their children once they have entered a new relationship and had more children. I think the figure was 21% of fathers with children in a subsequent relationship never see the children from their previous relationship.

The Mail (God love 'em) referred to these men as "serial fathers."

So here we have two related stories; one of them is being reported, the other not. 

To me, they seem interlinked. On the one hand, you have these men going around fathering children, then running off and setting up another family and forgetting about the first. They lose contact with their first family. And now the government is effectively saying to the mothers of those children, "yes, that's a perfectly acceptable thing for him to do. And if you want us to help you get any maintenance out of him, you can pay us for it."

Nobody chooses to use the CSA; they are pretty rubbish at what they do. You use the CSA when you have no other way of getting money out of an absent parent - mother or father, it makes no difference. I went to the CSA when I realised that monthly payments from S's father would be used as another way of controlling me - you can only have this much money this month because I only saw her this many times. My health visitor practically ordered me to use them rather than have monthly contact with someone who had already done so much damage to both of our lives.

So where does the government's new proposal put me? Over the Summer I was receiving £2 every two weeks from the CSA. Taking 4% of that probably costs more in administration than they would be making out of it.

And what will we get for our 4%? Will they suddenly begin chasing late payments? Making thorough checks of absent parents' income figures to ensure they are telling the truth? Will they investigate whether the absent parent is perhaps doing a bit of work "off the books" so as to avoid paying maintenance?

I don't claim maintenance through the CSA because it is of any use to me. In all honesty, I would rather not be taking anything from that man. My health visitor tells me we should take the money, because when you father a child you are responsible for that life forever. That is what being a parent means. 

What the government are planning to do seems to me to be removing that responsibility. They are saying to people: go out, get pregnant/get someone pregnant. Run off and leave the child. It's fine. You won't be held responsible.

Why This Government Idea of Banning Packed Lunches Might Be Helpful.

Imagine this scenario. An entirely fictional scenario, of course. Say, for example, there are 6 children living with a parent who’s not overly bothered about their wellbeing.

Imagine living in a house where a tray of
nachos & cheese was a suitable lunch for seven people.

The children take it in turns to make the packed lunches each evening.

The older children get two slices of bread, the younger children get one.

Large blocks of ham are bought because they are cheapest, and one of the older children cuts this into slices for sandwiches. There are no sharp knives though, and the older children are impatient – so the ham is mostly cut into lumps.

Often the bread has been left in an open bag overnight, because one of the younger ones helped themselves to a chocolate spread sandwich before bed last night.

Sometimes there’s no margarine in the fridge.

So the children have lumps of ham in dry, stale bread. These go straight into a lunch bag, or are perhaps wrapped in a carrier bag.

With this, each child takes a packet of crisps, and a chocolate cereal bar. Except the chocolate cereal bars have all been eaten within 2 days of the shopping being done, so by Wednesday it’s just a sandwich and some crisps. Unless they’ve run out of crisps as well.

Occasionally, if there are oranges in the house, each child may take an orange with them.

When the children come home, they take it in turns to cook dinner. It is invariably a bag of frozen chicken breasts thrown into a pan with a jar of whichever sauce is to hand, and some rice. Sometimes some frozen vegetables are chucked in as well, but only if someone remembers to find it in the freezer.


This is the same, every day. On weekends, their lunch is Tesco Value instant noodles.

For snacks they have chocolate spread sandwiches.

On shopping day there are oranges, apples and bananas in the house – but only for a couple of days.



Meanwhile, the parent eats Chinese take away at least once a week, drinks alcohol freely, buys snacks whilst out and about.

Occasionally the parent does the cooking, and on those days they will have Thai green chicken curry for tea, or perhaps a roast.

These children are not eating badly because of a lack of money, or a lack of education or ability to cook. It’s a lack of care. An attitude of “that’ll do.” It’s the same reason they don’t have a bed time, and are routinely kept up to 10pm and gone to finish their chores or run errands.

There are children out there who don’t know what a pineapple looks like, who can only identify apples, oranges and bananas because they never see any other fruit.

For these children – who are, of course, entirely fictional – compulsory school meals would mean a chance of a properly balanced meal, maybe some fresh fruit and vegetables. Maybe broadening their horizons from the dull repetition of their daily diet, which varies only when they run out of something and have to go to a different shop to buy a replacement.

I can understand why the parent blogging community disagrees with the report. The sort of parent who blogs about their children's lives is not the sort who would leave them to their own devices to throw a sandwich together at 10pm. And I'm fairly sure no school kitchen on earth could compete with Pippa at A Mother's Ramblings; I am jealous of her children and their lunches on a regular basis.

But it's a depressing fact that there are thousands of children out there like the ones I've written about here. Kids whose parents are too busy drinking or taking drugs or playing bingo or watching Coronation Street to ever be bothered enough to put together a packed lunch. Kids who end up bringing chocolate spread sandwiches in a carrier bag as their packed lunch. Kids who don't even get a bottle of water on a hot day.

For these kids, the recommendations in that report would make a world of difference.

Yes, it's insulting for everyone else, and I completely understand everyone's point on this - but there are people out there who really are not doing a good job at feeding their children properly. This will be affecting the children's behaviour, concentration, and general performance in lessons. They shouldn't disadvantaged because of something as simple as food.

I don't know what the answer is on this one. It's not likely that the government would succeed in banning packed lunches and forcing all children to have school meals. But I really feel that they need to do something to help the ones who really do need it.