14
Examination of witnesses
Natasha Rattu and Dr Cassandra Wiener.
Q103 The Chair: Good morning and welcome to this meeting of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee. We are delighted to have with us Dr Cassandra Wiener, who is the reader in law at City University and an expert on coercive control, and Natasha Rattu from the charity Karma Nirvana, who is an expert on forced marriage. Thank you both for giving us your time this morning.
We will run through a number of questions and I will kick off with a straightforward question, starting with you, Dr Wiener. Could you give us a definition of the area of abuse that you work in and how it manifests in real life?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: Absolutely. Thank you. Before I do, I should probably explain that I am a lawyer and my expertise is in coercive control and the criminal justice response. I work very much with police, prosecutors, and the courts. My framing is criminal justice-based, if that makes sense.
Coercive control for me is the big picture. What is really interesting is that we have heard today a lot about behaviours and my expertise is in the structure. I take a step back and look at what coercive control is and how it operates. It manifests as a campaign of domination, and we have heard a lot about it from different perspectives through the very helpful evidence we have already had.
In essence, it is an architecture or framework of demands that become coercive because there is always a threat. That is what you need to understand: that matrix between demand, coercion and threat. She—and it is generally, but not always, a she—will do what she is told because she knows and fears what will happen if she does not. The really important thing to remember is that it often involves physical violence. There does not need to be very much because, do not forget, perpetrators have access. They have 24/7 access to their victims. As long as she knows what could happen, it does not need to happen very often.
I want to finish with a very short vignette that I use in my book, Coercive Control and the Criminal Law, which people tell me is really helpful in bringing it alive. It was actually the first survivor I spoke to, Susan. She told me that she had a whirlwind romance, got married, and they went on honeymoon. Her husband Hugo, halfway through the week of the honeymoon, asked her to change her clothes because he did not like what she was wearing. She did not like his tone, so she said no. He went to the bathroom, got a towel, and he nearly strangled her to death with the bathroom towel—horrible incident with the towel. From that moment on and for the next six years, and it took her six years to escape, if there was ever any tension he would go to the bathroom, get the towel, and he would put it on the kitchen table. She would do whatever it was he wanted her to do.
The reason why it is such an excellent vignette and example is because it shows the relationship between the demand, the coercion and the threat. She did what she was told because she knew what might happen if she did not. It also shows the importance of the big picture. If you treat it as incidents, what has been called in the literature incidentalising, which we are going to come on to with some other questions, then you miss the big picture and that really impedes your ability to safeguard and hold perpetrators to account. That is true of the evidence we have heard already. For example, if you were to take any of those instances of tech abuse in isolation, you would miss the big picture of what is happening. You need to understand that they are being used to back up threats, their coercive demands.
The Chair: When I entered the work in this area, I remember asking someone what the difference was between a bad relationship and domestic abuse. Their answer was, “Living in fear”. The towel story sadly is a great example of living in fear. Thank you very much for that. Natasha, can I come to you and ask you the same question please?
Natasha Rattu: I represent an organisation called Karma Nirvana and we work to address honour-based abuse in the UK. We provide the Home Office-commissioned national Honour Based Abuse Helpline and, for context, support around 3,000 people every year in the UK affected by this.
It is really important to say from the beginning that honour-based abuse is a form of domestic abuse, and I say that deliberately because it is often not recognised operationally in that way. Honour-based abuse is abuse that is perpetrated to protect, defend or restore perceived notions of family or community honour. What distinguishes it from more commonly recognised forms of domestic abuse is that victims are often abused by multiple perpetrators who are acting together and collectively. These perpetrators are frequently parents, siblings, in-laws, extended family members, and sometimes wider community networks rather than solely an intimate partner.
The abuse can manifest in many different ways. We see coercive control, physical violence and economic abuse—all the things we have heard about this morning. There are types of abuse that are intrinsically linked to honour-based abuse dynamics: forced marriage, child marriage, female genital mutilation, virginity testing, and hymenoplasty.
The key feature, when talking about honour-based abuse, is that it is very collective and community-reinforced. Victims are not generally fearful of one perpetrator but are fearful of entire family systems and wider social repercussions. It is important to say this because it shows that there are significant barriers that people affected by honour-based abuse experience, such as fear of disownment or community ostracism, and sometimes very serious violence if they speak out.
We know that 12 to 15 honour killings take place in the UK every year. I want to highlight one of those as an example. Banaz Mahmod was murdered by family members on the perception that she had brought shame on them. Her case really illustrates the collective nature of how honour-based abuse can manifest. The harm that it causes victims and survivors is profound. It is long lasting. Victims often lose their entire support networks because, unlike with many cases of intimate partner abuse, the family are implicit. Therefore, when they leave, they leave not just a single person but a whole identity and community. That in a nutshell is how I would define what honour-based abuse is.
The Chair: That is really clear, thank you so much. I am going to turn to Baroness Gohir.
Q104 Baroness Gohir: How is the statutory definition of domestic abuse used by front-line workers, social workers, police and community providers when dealing with domestic abuse? I will come to you first, Natasha, because obviously honour-based abuse is not in the definition. How do you use the statutory definition of domestic abuse?
Natasha Rattu: One key issue is that connections are not made. People see honour-based abuse as something totally distinct from domestic abuse. What we see is a very different operational response to the victims of honour-based abuse in terms of what they experience. We will talk about personal connection points later on, but that recognition does not exist. There is a disparity in the responses to victims where there is domestic abuse that is intimate partner based versus honour-based abuse, where there are multiple perpetrators. The consequence is that risk is not necessarily recognised or picked up. Multiple perpetrators are often missed. We often hear from survivors who feel that, when they talk about their experiences, professionals do not really understand what they are talking about. Therefore, they lose trust and confidence in the very professionals they are going to, to seek help from. The sad reality is that it is really not recognised or understood properly on the front line, which has long-lasting and harmful consequences for the people seeking help.
Baroness Gohir: Dr Wiener, did you want to add to that?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: Yes, I would like to add to that. I should say that the point I am about to make is probably where I can contribute best. I might take a little longer, but then I will be very happy to step back on some other questions.
From my perspective, what we have now with the domestic abuse definition is an umbrella term that I am fine with. I understand the reasons why it needs to be an umbrella term but, unfortunately, in the move to the umbrella term, we have not organised it particularly successfully.
One big difficulty from a coercive control perspective is that it is misframed in the way that the current definition is drafted. That did not used to be the case. Many of you in this room will remember the 2012 definition, the working definition, which worked really well, to my mind. It was a very cleverly crafted and properly drafted definition that had coercive control correctly as the title, as the big picture, and it then listed underneath the different elements we have heard about so far today—the economic abuse, the tech abuse—as constituent parts of the behaviour that we understand as coercive control. It encouraged you not to see things as incidents but to take a step back, look at the big picture, and understand the meaning behind the tech and economic abuse—why it is being used as it is. What we have now is somewhere between the 2012 and 2021 definition. I have my own views on how it has happened, which I will explain if it would be helpful for you, but I will not dwell on it unless it is helpful.
What we have now in the 2021 definition is a set of bullet points that position coercive control as one of five bullet points alongside each other, which is really confusing and misleading because it is not a bullet point, it is the title. If we try to fragment it in that way, we are suggesting to the police, CPS, juries, courtrooms—to everybody involved in trying to hold perpetrators to account and keep some very vulnerable women and children safe—that coercive control is something different from physical or economic abuse because we are listing it in that way. We are really missing a vital opportunity in my view because we need front-line officers—Baroness Barran asked about front-line officers, who I work with quite a lot—to understand the big picture even at that point, perhaps especially at that point, because if they do not, we lose opportunities, we miss vital evidence and we cannot keep women safe.
Baroness Gohir: What else is coercive control covering? We know it covers tech and financial abuse but what comes to my mind is transnational marriage abandonment, which is linked to coercive control. Are there examples such as that that are not talked about when it comes to coercive control?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: A lot of what has been said so far makes sense. I would like to see tech abuse, for example, set out as one of the bullet points. I have suggestions as to how the wording could be phrased in a way that is helpful for the criminal justice response rather than that at the moment, which is, unfortunately, misleading and confusing. I can talk about that now or when we talk about how we want the definition to be a little different.
Baroness Gohir: You can add to it later.
The Chair: Do not let me forget that we are going to loop back to that.
Baroness Gerada: Just a little supplementary: that makes a lot of sense to me because I was always concerned about the title, domestic abuse. You are suggesting, and it is not necessarily something that will happen, that the title should be the “Coercive Control Act”, with everything else falling underneath, of which domestic abuse is one of the bullet points rather than the title.
Dr Cassandra Wiener: No, that is not what I am suggesting. I am happy with domestic abuse being the title. What I am suggesting is that we word it like we used to in 2012, to make it clear that what we are talking about is coercive and controlling behaviour that can manifest in any of the following ways, not limited to but can include economic abuse, tech abuse. We then list the bullet points, which is what we used to do. It got lost in the translation. I think I know how, but that might not be relevant right now.
Q105 Baroness Sugg: My question is around the definition. You have pretty much answered it but is there anything else you want to add about how you think the definition should be changed to better capture?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: I can go into the weeds of how it should be changed or I can circulate that afterwards, whatever you—
Baroness Sugg: It would be helpful if you circulate it afterwards. If you can give us a little overview—you have already set out the coercive piece.
Dr Cassandra Wiener: Of course. What we need to do is go back to having coercive control as the heading, setting it out at the top. Then, when we do the bullet points, we just need to make them a little more helpful. At the moment, we say “use of violent or threatening behaviour”. We could easily say “use of violent or threatening behaviour to control, to regulate, to monitor day to day activities”. Immediately, police would know what they were looking for and would understand the behaviour. They would see it as part of the coercive and controlling pattern.
I can go on. There are a couple of other bullet points that could be tweaked to be a little clearer. I would include something on behaviour that has as its purpose isolating B—the legislation uses A and B; B is the victim—from friends, relatives and other sources of support. I would of course include economic abuse. I would like to have tech abuse in there, actually. It is so structural now that we really need it spelled out so the officers know what to look for.
As I say, the most important thing is to have the coercive or controlling behaviour up front at the top, move it back to where it used to be as a heading so that we understand how to position the different behaviours that we are looking at, if that makes sense.
The Chair: Before we go to Natasha, can I ask you two specifics? Would you keep in “any single incident” or should that go? There was a professor in the States called Michael Johnson, who you have probably read. He had a concept of intimate partner terrorism, which was his version of coercive and controlling behaviour. From memory, he said that about 10% of relationships were what he called common couple violence, where there was lots of violence but no control by directional violence. How would you situate the second if you have coercive control as the overall umbrella? Do you have it as an umbrella with a small bit on the side?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: That is my favourite question; it is such an excellent question. Yes, I am very familiar with Michael Johnson. What we now know is that the vast majority of domestic abuse that comes to police attention is coercive control—we think around 80%. The Crime Survey for England and Wales is not yet sophisticated enough to be sure. They are moving it. They are improving it. If we imagine it is about 80% then what we need to do is make sure that the definition still captures those isolated incidents, which is why I would remove the wording on isolated course of conduct altogether. The way I would draft it is to put physical and sexual violence first because those are examples in the Michael Johnson scenarios that can happen as one-off incidents. The rest just do not. Economic abuse does not happen as a one-off incident, neither does tech abuse. It does not actually need to have that kind of bottoming out, if that makes sense.
Baroness Sugg: On the statutory definition, Natasha, what changes do you think are needed? Since the Act we have had a statutory definition of honour-based abuse. You made your point earlier very well, particularly around the issue of multiple perpetrators. Within that Domestic Abuse Act framing, what changes would you like to see within the statutory definition?
Natasha Rattu: The Domestic Abuse Act does now broadly capture the range of different harms that are experienced by victims of honour-based abuse. We have spoken about the inclusion of coercive and controlling behaviour, threatening behaviour, economic abuse, et cetera. That is brilliant. The issue is less about the wording of the legislation and more about how it is interpreted and operationalised in practice because domestic abuse is still being viewed through this narrow intimate partner lens, which means that perpetrators are being missed.
We are seeing prosecutions where there are multiple perpetrators but only one is being pursued because that is the framework. The system operates on a system of one victim, one perpetrator, and other perpetrators therefore seemingly get away with abuse. That was certainly felt in the case of Fawziyah Javed. Her mother, Yasmin Javed, speaks quite openly about the fact that Fawziyah had spoken to the police, including six days prior to her murder, about the experiences of abuse and the in-laws she was living with. Despite that, other perpetrators were not pursued. That is very much an issue that is ongoing.
It is important to recognise that we now have a statutory definition for honour-based abuse, which you, Lady Sugg, have helped us get to this point and get it over the line. We are really pleased to see that. However, there was a missed opportunity during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act to bring this in sooner and to make sure that we had a more explicit link between domestic and honour-based abuse.
At present, honour-based abuse is seen as something separate or distinct. It is just not recognised as a form of domestic abuse, which has real practical consequences. For example, if I reflect on the local authority duties under Part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act around assessing need and commissioning support and safe accommodation, this does not always properly capture victims of honour-based abuse. Many local domestic abuse strategies will fail to recognise that multiple perpetrator element and the need for a specialist by and for service. What that means in practice is that victims who are fleeing several family members may struggle to access safe accommodation because mainstream services are not always equipped to manage that level of risk. We are also seeing it in other ways; for example, in MARAC processes, where there is a failure to fully identify the wider family perpetrators who are there.
A suggestion would be for a stronger connection explicit in the stat guidance linking honour-based abuse to domestic abuse, ensuring mandatory inclusion within local domestic abuse strategies and recognising that honour-based abuse is a form of domestic abuse. Therefore, commissioning frameworks and training requirements need to capture that so that we are adequately covering all forms of domestic abuse and do not have a sense of it being just very singular, perpetrator, intimate partner based.
The Chair: Lady Sugg, do you want to follow on with your second question because you have to leave a bit early?
Q106 Baroness Sugg: We are coming on to children later but I wanted to ask about the reduction from 18 to 16 in the statutory guidance. What impact do you think it has had? It is a good and positive thing? There is an ongoing discussion about whether it should be lowered further.
Dr Cassandra Wiener: In the context of intimate partner relationships, it is a good thing that it has been lowered to 16. More and more is coming out about teenage coercive control and domestic abuse, which is really scary. It is really fast paced. What we know is changing very quickly.
One concern I have is that I do not know that it makes sense for the definition to be lowered in terms of the other kinds of abuse that are now included in the overall domestic abuse definition. Just from the coercive control perspective, which is my area, lowering the age makes a lot of sense. I am concerned by what I read is going on between children who are younger than 16. A big piece of work was done by SafeLives in 2017 that you may have come across, which suggested that it actually starts at 14 or 15. My concern is that we need to be getting after that. We need to be helping these children. We should do anything we can to make that more possible.
Baroness Sugg: Natasha, from your perspective with honour-based abuse, has lowering the age from 18 to 16 helped in your work?
Natasha Rattu: Yes. It is very important for domestic abuse more broadly and for honour-based abuse. Thinking about domestic abuse more generally, it is recognised that many 16 and 17-year-olds experience coercive control and/or sexual abuse within that intimate partner setting. It is domestic abuse.
Prior to the Act, these experiences were often minimised as teenage relationship issues rather than domestic abuse, so it has definitely helped to improve that recognition and safeguarding response. It has also been extremely important to recognise children as victims in their own right. I have definitely seen that reflected more positively within domestic homicide reviews, where there is now greater consideration of the lived experience of children and the trauma they have experienced.
Thinking about honour-based abuse specifically, lowering the age has been very positive. Through our work at Karma Nirvana, we see many 16 and 17 year-olds experiencing coercive family control, threats linked to forced marriage, and surveillance connected to family honour. However, we also know that honour-based abuse frequently begins much earlier than 16. We support professionals such as social workers and teachers, not necessarily children directly, who recognise signs of honour-based abuse in children as young as 12 or 13.
If we just look at 16, there is a danger that we are not necessarily picking up those cases where it happens a lot younger. The difficulty is that abuse under 16 is often viewed solely through that child protection lens, so we are not necessarily always seeing the domestic abuse dynamic that underpins the behaviour being picked up. One suggestion is clearer statutory guidance recognising that children under 16 can also experience domestic abuse dynamics, particularly where you have that honour dynamic. That is how we see it happening at Karma Nirvana.
Q107 Baroness Porter of Fulwood: Is there anything you want to add that you have not covered so far in terms of the positive or negative impacts of the Act more broadly outside the definition or, alongside that, areas where you would like to see the Act changed?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: Are we going to deal with personally connected separately?
The Chair: Yes.
Dr Cassandra Wiener: I will wait until we deal with personally connected.
Natasha Rattu: The Act has definitely improved outcomes in a number of important ways. Legally and strategically, it has significantly broadened that understanding of domestic abuse beyond physical violence. That has been particularly important for victims of honour-based abuse because the abuse is absolutely more than the physical element it was constrained to. It is about control, surveillance, and restriction of autonomy. The recognition of children in their own right has definitely been welcomed and has improved the outcome.
The legal framework has improved but it is the operational implementation that remains inconsistent. As I have said, honour-based abuse is still being treated as something culturally separate from domestic abuse rather than fully understood within the domestic abuse framework. It is thinking about how we translate that legal, strategic landscape to make sense operationally on the ground. If we do not do that, victims will continue to fall through the cracks where they do not fit the traditional convention of how people perceive domestic abuse.
Overall, the legal and strategic framework has improved but front-line understanding and implementation are yet to catch up.
Q108 Baroness Gerada: Cassandra, you have already highlighted that you want to talk about personally connected but, over the course of these hearings and the evidence, we have heard a lot for and against. I do not know whether you were at the last session about personally connected and whether its expansion has been good, bad, or indifferent. I will start with you, Natasha, because your honour-based violence expertise is vast in these respects. What is your sense of that before I go to Cassandra?
Natasha Rattu: The definition of “personally connected” is legally one of the strongest aspects of the Act for victims of honour-based abuse. That is because Section 2 includes relatives, not just intimate partners. That is absolutely essential because perpetrators in honour-based abuse cases are often parents, siblings, cousins, in-laws, et cetera.
The issue is that that understanding of “relative” is not understood on the ground. The definition of “relative” is through the Family Law Act and includes extended family relationships. The sad reality is that practitioners on the front line do not appreciate the depth and breadth of the definition. In practice, we are seeing again that domestic abuse is commonly understood in that current or former partner context, which creates significant problems because victims who are being abused outside that context of intimate partners are less likely to be picked up and recognised.
The other issue that we are seeing is operational. Services are not necessarily picking up the point of relatives being potential perpetrators and this being part and parcel of domestic abuse. On our helpline we had a victim who was not able to go into a refuge because the service provision said that the perpetrator was not an intimate partner and therefore it was not domestic abuse. It is not just that that recognition is not across the mainstream professionals we would expect victims to access but that those specialist services that victims are accessing are not necessarily picking it up. The personal connection point is a really important one because by virtue of that we capture honour-based abuse. The operational reality is that professionals do not quite understand that.
Baroness Gerada: Cassandra, what is your sense?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: I was one of those who originally argued against the expansion. For clarity, I felt we needed to talk about intimate partner. I have moved on from that position. I accept that the umbrella term we now work with has had a lot of good benefits, not least what we have heard from Natasha.
I would say two things. First, we have lost clarity for the reasons I mentioned before. That is not inevitable. The 2012 definition was umbrella; it included relatives but it still had clarity. We can rework and capture that. Secondly, we have not heard yet the last point I want to make. It relates to a project led by my colleague, Professor Katrin Hohl, called Project Bright Light. It was a very deep dive into domestic abuse and one particular police force. One of the key and most central findings from that work was that the unintended consequence of the broadening of the definition and the fact that it is now an umbrella term is that unfortunately the system was built for a time when domestic abuse meant intimate partner abuse. That is no longer true. I am not arguing that we go back, but what I am saying is that we need more than one intimate partner violence pathway for police and criminal justice responses.
We need to develop tools, training and interventions for family violence honour-based defending. We need to improve relationship identification and recording. At the moment, the crime-recording, flagging, risk-assessment and police processes for family violence and intimate partner violence require very different responses now that we are so broad. A one-off crime by a family perpetrator receives the same policing attention, the same risk assessment and the same pathway as high-risk, ongoing, long-term coercive control. From that perspective, it does not lead to the most efficient resourcing. Police resources are finite. We need to get more sophisticated about the way we handle that.
Finally, the evidence suggests that the justice goals of victims vary now the definition is so broad. If you are talking about a victim of honour-based abuse or a victim of coercive control, what those women want from the criminal justice system might be very different. With this one size fits all intimate partner violence pathway, we are not responding to what victims tell us about what they have experienced and what they want and need from us as sensitively as we need to.
The Chair: That is interesting because that point came out when we had Professor Amanda Robinson here. She had been involved in the Bright Light evaluation and she made that point as well. It is helpful to hear it.
Dr Cassandra Wiener: I am really glad. That is good.
Q109 Baroness Gerada: My second question, and we ask this to everyone, is around the statutory definition of domestic abuse. It defines domestic abuse in a gender-neutral way. Has this had any consequences for how the type of abuse you are an expert in is treated, for example, by statutory agencies, community services, and the courts? I will go to you, Natasha. Has the gender-neutral issue influenced what you are seeing on the ground in terms of response at all?
Natasha Rattu: For honour-based abuse, the gender-neutral definition is important because honour-based abuse can affect men, boys and people from LGBT+ communities, as well as women and girls. However, gender neutrality must not become gender blindness because honour-based abuse is highly gendered in practice. Women and girls are disproportionately targeted around sexuality, relationship, marriage choices, virginity, education, and autonomy. Many of the forms of abuse that we see, such as forced marriage, virginity testing, et cetera, overwhelmingly affect women and girls. There is therefore a risk that a purely gender-neutral framing obscures the patriarchal control that underpins most of the honour-based abuse that we are talking about. At the same time, it is really important to remain inclusive because men, boys and LGBT+ communities do access our help as well. We often see cases linked to sexuality and perceived nonconformity. A practical suggestion is that the policy and guidance should explicitly recognise both the gendered nature of honour-based abuse specifically but also the need for inclusive support pathways.
Baroness Gerada: Cassandra, what is your sense of the gender-neutral issue?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: I am going to make myself unpopular with some of my feminist colleagues, but, as a lawyer, gender-neutral works perfectly. I would not want the legislation to be gendered. It is important to recognise that coercive control does get perpetrated by women—not often; the quants tell us it is way more often the other way around. Something like 99.5% of cases that come before the courts on coercive control have been male perpetrators and female victims. I do not think we lose by having the definition in law as gender neutral.
What I would say, echoing what we have just heard, is that the institutional response needs to be gender sensitive. We need to be aware that the vast majority of cases are perpetrated by men against women. We need our police officers to be aware that that is the case. Unfortunately, one of the tactics used by perpetrators, which everyone in this room will have heard about, is where they try to flip the coin and present as victims. We need police to be aware of these quants. We need police to be aware of the numbers because they need to be aware that for the vast majority of the time they are going to be looking at a male perpetrator and a female victim. Do we need that reflected in gender-sensitive law? No, I do not think we do. It works fine.
Baroness Gerada: Amazing answers from both of you. We do not need gender blindness and we do need gender sensitivity, but gender neutrality is a good thing to have.
Dr Cassandra Wiener: In the legislation, yes, as it gives us options that we need.
Q110 Lord Polak: Natasha, you were saying a little while ago that domestic abuse is assumed to be between partners. I wonder, by defining children as victims in their own right, which has been done, whether it has helped. How has the impact of children now defined in the law affected your work?
Natasha Rattu: Recognising children as victims in their own right has been one of the most important aspects. I have touched upon how we are seeing that reflected in domestic homicide reviews. I was recently on a review panel where the eldest daughter was also recognised as a victim, as part of the learning. We can pay tribute to the fact that we have this recognition in the legislation, which is so important. It has helped to shift professional understanding and improve that consideration of domestic abuse—that they are victims in their own right.
For honour-based abuse specifically, children are not merely witnesses. They are also direct victims of the coercive family control that they experience because honour-based abuse is synonymous with coercive control. You can never really have honour-based abuse without coercive control. We see children who are pressured to monitor their siblings and report back to parents to enforce those family expectations, or to remain silent about the abuse. The recognition of children as victims has therefore been extremely important to help professionals better understand the long-term psychological harm caused by that fear, surveillance, and coercive control. However, there is some inconsistency in practice where professionals continue to prioritise family preservation.
In honour-based abuse specifically, we see lots of disguised compliance, where families are not necessarily known to services and children are sometimes disbelieved over what parents are saying. We are still seeing that. There definitely has to be better guidance for those professionals, particularly in social care, who use Think Family approaches, who can sometimes inadvertently increase risk when they meet or share information. We have some way to go but the recognition has definitely been a big improvement.
Dr Cassandra Wiener: The fact that the Act defines children as victims is really important. I am very supportive of that as a step. I suspect we have not gone far enough. What we now know about children who experience coercive control is how much they are used as a tool of the perpetrator and how damaging the impact and effect is on those children. My suspicion is that there is more work to be done on this.
One point I would make is that there have not been any changes to the National Crime Recording Standard or the Home Office counting rules. I mention that because I am not sure that evaluation of that as a step is particularly possible right now. In order to build on the great work that has happened in this space and to take it further, at the very least we need to be capturing what is going on and what is happening on the ground. I would very much like to see those changes happen.
Lord Polak: May I just come back? It is on the face of the Act and you say that it has not gone far enough. Can you describe what extra you would want to be done?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: I am sorry. I would need to give that some more thought and come back to you. It is not something I can answer now.
Lord Polak: Thank you. That would be great.
The Chair: We would love it if you could do that. Natasha, can I just come back to your answer? Both of you said the same thing, which is that it is a very important step forward. In the family courts, children have been recognised as victims in their own right for many years. Help us understand why this is a material difference.
If one of the outcomes that we all want from this change is that children get more support in their own right, and if support risks looking like coming from children’s social care, which often does not feel like support, particularly if you are the mother of the child and a victim of honour-based violence or domestic abuse, you are going to be worried that your parenting could be brought into question. You might want time to think about it, but is it really such a big change given how long children have been recognised as victims in the family courts? What would good support look like?
Natasha Rattu: I can come in on those questions. To address your second question first in terms of what good support would look like for children, one thing that is more beneficial now is that we are increasingly seeing lots of children who are 16 and 17 years old, whose perpetrators are their parents, and they are stepping away from the expectations that are being placed on them. They are demonstrating that they want to have their own autonomy to make choices about what they study, who they marry, et cetera, and are coming forward and making disclosures. What we are seeing in care proceedings in particular is that recognition of children as victims of domestic abuse in their own right means that the support is better than the framing of that Think Family approach. We are not quite there yet because the Think Family approach is still there. Often we see information that the child victim has shared with professionals being shared with respondent parents in care proceedings, which ends up increasing their risk significantly.
Another thing around the support point is that we are seeing children who are entering the care system without the support infrastructure and nuance of understanding the enormity of what they have done in speaking out against not just their parents but their family and community. A lot of these children end up going back home because the support is not quite right for them. They do not have that nuanced support around the enormity of what they have done and the level of shame.
I have been involved as an expert in many cases where children end up retracting what they initially said at first disclosure because of pressures and of them missing home. These are children who love their parents but are grappling with the fact that they also want to have the autonomy to make choices for themselves.
The other thing I would say about support for children, which I mentioned with regard to domestic homicide reviews, is that we are working on a lot of cases where children are victims through what they have seen but are also victims through losing a mother, typically in the cases we have been experts on, to horrific domestic homicide. There is a real lack of support for children who are navigating that sort of grief, having lost their mother in that way but often with a father who then enters the prison system. They then enter the care system. We see massive gaps in their support, and that is outside an honour-based abuse context, even within domestic abuse. That is another thing I would mention: we see gaps in support for children in that setting.
The Chair: Dr Wiener, do you have anything to add?
Dr Cassandra Wiener: I do not have anything to add.
The Chair: A huge thank you to you both. It has been genuinely fascinating and very clear. There are a few points where it would be helpful if you could come back to us in writing. We would really appreciate that. For now, this public session is concluded.
