Domestic Violence legislation makes a big stride in the right direction

It’s not often you hear a charity welcoming a bit of draft government legislation as a “once in a generation opportunity.” But that’s exactly what Sandra Horley, Chief Executive of the charity Refuge, said on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour this morning, in response to draft legislation that would signify a major overhaul in the treatment of domestic abuse.
Even criticism (as evidenced by a piece written in today’s Telegraph by Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid), focusses on the perpetual complaint of lack of resources – an understandable and probably inevitable complaint by a charity rightly advocating for how things should be in an ideal world (or a world where we could at least ideally deal with all domestic abuse).

We can take these reactions to indicate that the legislation is both welcomed, and on to something.

Here’s a chicken and egg question for you: what comes first – societal change or legal change? Which drives which? I’ve always been convinced that social change and social pressure herald legal changes. It’s hard to imagine, for example, that the first time a majority believed in equal pay for men and women doing the same work was in 1970 when the Sex Discrimination Act came, or that there wasn’t a widespread recognition that sex could be forced without consent within a marriage, even if it wasn’t until the 1990s that rape in marriage received due legal recognition. Perhaps these landmark moments stick in the mind because they marked ‘about time’ moments in the history of social justice. I believe that another is on the horizon today, and boy is it welcome!

 this reaction is not brought about by the research findings that the cost of domestic abuse is some £66bn a year – the long-established fact that domestic abuse claims the life of, on average, 2 women a week in Britain is sobering and arresting enough. Nor does it come from the fact that for the first time a legal definition of the concept will exist, which includes economic abuse. It is, in fact, the understanding that we are witnessing the beginnings of a legal framework that better positions us to deal with abuse for what it is – a pattern of interconnected behaviours that need to work as a whole for the abuse to develop and sustain itself.

The significant advantage of giving greater recognition to economic abuse is that we can deal with it as an enabling component of that pattern. Financial abuse is an instrument through which abusers can achieve the isolation and alienation of their victims required to render them passive and prepared to tolerate what is happening to them or at the very least not to walk away from it. Isolation is achieved both by alienating a victim from friends and family, which until a person is fully subdued one would assume requires a mix of enforcement and more subtle persuasion. The deep and profound psychological abuse is an enabler for the physical beatings, sexual abuse and other manifestations of aggression and violence because it is only by damaging the psychological health of a victim that they would be vulnerable enough to accept it.

No one part can easily exist without the other. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that these changes, without an accompanying cultural shift in attitudes and yes, thorough resourcing, will allow preventative approaches to better take in to account the non-physical, subtle and secretive tools employed by the abuser. Indeed, the complexities of victim psychology, and the fact that domestic abuse crosses class, race and any other boundaries you can think of, will continue to make this crime a difficult one to manage, and still allow abusers to carry on for far too long with impunity. But at least with a more updated and targeted legal framework in place, a great stride to do the basics better, and improve the experience when victims make the brave decision to come forward, is being made.