Content warning: domestic abuse, violence
- VIDEO Love, Power & Control Part One & Two with Jess Hill >
- TRANSCRIPT Love, Power & Control Part Two: the Australian Context >
Love, Power & Control Transcript: Webinar #1. Perspectives from the UK
Editor’s Note: Love, Power and Control was a two part webinar series, hosted by the Victorian Women’s Trust. If you are able, we encourage you to watch both videos here. Transcripts are provided for reference only and may contain typos. Please confirm accuracy before quoting.
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Jess Hill (moderator)
Thanks so much for joining us tonight. I’m speaking tonight from the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. Their sovereignty was never ceded, and I welcome especially any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on this call.
Jess
My name is Jess Hill. I’m a journalist and author of “See What You Made Me Do.” I’ve been working on the field, on the issue of domestic abuse since around 2014. And this is the first webinar hosted by the excellent Victorian Women’s Trust on the issue of criminalising coercive control. And this week, we’re hearing from leaders from the UK who have spearheaded this change, who have written it all the way through to now and who are working on the frontlines with victim survivors, and also with the authorities who are supposed to keep them safe.
Jess
Now, speaking of safety, we really want everyone on the call to be safe and feel safe. And we’ll be talking obviously today about abuse and about violence. And so if you’re feeling disturbed by this, if, if you are feeling like you need to step away, please do. There are also helplines in the chat listed if that’s of help, and just prioritise your safety. You know, get up and make a cup of tea if it’s all feeling a bit much. We also would like to just discourage audience members from disclosing triggering details of their personal experiences in the chat. And I think just, let’s just all look out for each other. It’s a really heavy topic.
Jess
If there is time, we’ll, we’ll definitely try to have a Q&A following the panel talk. And people can enter their questions in the Q&A function in the black ribbon down the bottom. I think that I’ll be checking that Q&A as we talk. So if things come up for you as we go, please feel free to put a question in there. And we may actually just weave it into the discussion. Otherwise, we’ll, we’ll try to make some time for it at the end. But if, if something’s really pressing, it may be that we’re planning to get to it. So I won’t actually ask it explicitly, but otherwise, put it in the chat. And this session will go for 40 minutes. Hopefully, we’ll have 20 minutes at the end, but we’ll see how we go.
Jess
Now in Australia, as as many of you probably know, if you’re on this call, there’s the calls, to criminalise coercive control have gained a lot of momentum in the last few months. And really, as a term, it’s, it’s become much better known since the one of the most horrific homicides really in, in the last few years, which was Rowan Baxter, murdering his ex partner, Hannah Clarke and their three children, which happened in February of last year. Now, after that coercive control became a subject of pretty intense media interest, because what was notable about Rowan Baxter is that prior to them separating, he actually hadn’t used any physical violence. So, but what he had used was pretty much every technique of coercive control, from isolation to surveillance, to belittling, intimidating, threatening gaslighting, the whole, the whole sweep of it was there. So he sort of became this exemplar for a coercive controller.
Jess
As a result, I think of that, really this momentum and to criminalise coercive control, not only because it is of itself, a form of abuse that is so serious, it’s even being compared to torture. But because we’ve also seen in domestic homicide reviews, that it is a feature of almost every domestic homicide. Controlling behaviour precedes a domestic murder. So pretty much every state and territory is now in some way considering whether or not to criminalise coercive control.
Jess
Now, in the UK, coercive control has been criminalised in England and Wales since 2015, and in Scotland, sort of implemented since 2019. So what we want to do tonight is just to really get a sense of what has been the effect of this, what was considered the impetus for actually criminalising in the first place? Has it actually increased safety for victims survivors? What has been the cultural effect? And is it actually possible to define coercive control to investigate and to prosecute it?
Jess
So without further ado, I’ll introduce our panel of speakers. We have Pragna Patel, who is the legendary director of Southall Black Sisters and a founding member of Women Against Fundamentalism. She has written extensively on race, gender and religion and is a prominent figure in this sector in the UK. Her TED Talk is injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I highly recommend you have a listen.
Jess
Dr. Marsha Scott is the Chief Executive of Scottish Women’s Aid and a feminist researcher and practitioner who has advocated, volunteered, researched and worked in the Violence Against Women sector in the UK, the US and Europe for 30 years. She was fundamental to getting the legislation in Scotland off the ground and played a central role in the actual writing of the legislation. So we’re really glad to have her on the line tonight.
Jess
Girijamba Polubothu, is the manager of Shakti Women’s Aid in Edinburgh, which has, also has other outreach services in other areas of Scotland. She’s worked extensively with minority ethnic organisations and has been working with Shakti Women’s Aid for the past 19 years. She sits on like a ridiculous amount of government panels and network groups, including the Scottish Government’s forced marriage network group, The anti social behaviour, crime and policing bill is something she’s been very much involved with. There’s so much that, that Giri is doing in working with government to respond to develop better responses to domestic abuse. So great to have her here tonight too.
Jess
Melani Morgan. Lastly but not least is a trainer and facilitator with over 30 years experience in the police. And at Safe Lives, she developed the “Domestic Abuse Matters” change program, which is a cultural, attitudinal and practice change program for frontline police, and anybody working in this sector or who has been a victim survivor of domestic abuse themselves, will understand just how important it is for our frontline police to better respond to this. Melanie uses her own lived experience of domestic abuse in all of her work, which brings a really unique and authentic voice to her training.
Jess
So welcome, everybody. And thank you for being here. It’s very early, where you come from across the other side of the world. And I wanted to come to you first Pragna. Why were these laws considered necessary, especially in England, given there was really no precedent elsewhere in the world to point to as to their effect, or whether they, whether they would actually provide better safety for women and children?
Pragna Patel
Well, I, I’m, this was actually spearheaded by Women’s Aid. So I cannot take any credit for, for the work that was done leading up to the enactment of this particular crime. But what I can say is that, I think that, you know, it is well known for the last so many decades of work around violence against women and girls, that actually what’s happening is particularly within the criminal justice system is the focus always tends to be on the physical side of violence, and physical, you know, sort of evidence of physical injuries, often what helps women to persuade police to take action. So we have a situation where there is a culture that’s developed that’s looked at reports of domestic violence has largely been or domestic abuse has largely been something that, you know, is about physical violence.
Pragna
And of course, those of us who are feminists, those of us who’ve worked around this issue will, will know that the physical violence always is contextualized within a wider dynamic, of coercive control, we just didn’t call it coercive control. But we began over the years to understand, to move away from the idea of domestic abuse as just physical abuse, and to also refer to emotional abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse.
Pragna
So if you look at, you know, the definitions of domestic abuse across government bodies, in the UK, and the government definition, the state definition of domestic abuse, you will see enshrined, that it is, you know, it is not just limited to physical abuse, it’s also financial, sexual, emotional abuse, already included in the definition. But for some reason, the financial, the sexual, the emotional abuse just gets left out. And it doesn’t seem to filter within kind of, in within institutions, it doesn’t seem to be a kind of institutional understanding of domestic abuse as part of a wider pattern, or dynamic of behaviors of harm, of harm.
Pragna
So I think that coercive control as an understanding of domestic abuse, being more than just physical abuse, has had some traction. I don’t know why actually, because we have had emotional abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse, understood and recognised as part of the experience of domestic abuse. But for some reason, it hasn’t had the same traction that coercive control has. So the need for, to understand precisely what you were saying, which was, you know, in relation to the homicide that you referred to, in your introductory remarks, the need to understand this wider dynamic of power and control is crucial to understanding domestic abuse and its impact.
Pragna
So I think, to that extent, whatever language we use, the fact that coercive control has had some traction, seems to have led, I think, to cultural change in how we understand domestic abuse. Now, I’m not suggesting that that cultural change is complete, or that we’re even anywhere near where we should be. But to the extent that that language is filtering down and creating a wider awareness and understanding of what the dynamic of abuse looks like for most women, and how coercion and control and abuse is perpetuated, is critical.
Pragna
And so to that extent, I think coercive control, if it helps to signify a continuum of abuse, a kind of a suggestion of multiple and overlapping forms of abuse, that women face, a kind of a sense of the wider abuse as a dynamic process, then I think it’s not a bad thing. And I think that that has what’s led to the creation of a criminal law to aid understanding of what we should really be talking about is patriarchal power and control, which somehow lost, lost the patriarchal bit.
Pragna
And I do worry, and I’m sure we’ll come back to it the, you know, the gendered nature of this. But insofar as we are talking about domestic abuse as a dynamic process, and a phenomenon that involves overlapping and multiple forms of abuse, it’s not a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing to make sure that, that is understood. It’s another thing entirely to ensure that it, you know, it’s not only understood, but implemented. But we’ll come to that.
Jess
No, of course. And, you know, just briefly, before I move on to some of the other panelists, I’m just curious, you know, people we’ve, we’ve long been kind of, I guess, nervous about introducing new laws, because we’ve seen in the last 30, 40 years, some of the unforeseen consequences. And so I wonder, were you concerned about that for the women that you help, coming from Black and other minority ethnic groups? Are you concerned about what that, whether there may be unforeseen consequences from introducing a new criminal law?
Pragna
We’re always concerned about any law, that, that is in enacted not, it’s not peculiar to coercive control. Even if we’re talking about any kind of criminal law that looks at domestic abuse, forced marriage, honour based violence, you know, any of these laws are necessary for the protection of women. But any of these laws can be instrumentalised by the state for all the, for other means. So one always has to be vigilant. And one always has to be very alert to the way in which those laws can be misused. And the way in which the state itself is a site of coercive control. So you can’t forget that, the law itself is a site of coercive control.
Pragna
So we can’t, as feminists, we have to deal with that. Because, you know, our relationship with the state is not an easy one, our relationship, we know whether we are BME background or not, it’s not an easy relationship, because the state is a site of power itself. And it can misuse its power, abuse its power. So for us, the question of whether coercive control was going to be something that might actually lead to a particular kind of, you know, over zealous intervention, in BME communities is all, is always a problem. But that, that’s true anyway, this law doesn’t make it any worse. We have to be very, very mindful of the ways in which the laws can be used or abused, to pursue agendas of surveillance and control and you know, that, that have other kinds of imperatives.
Pragna
Having said that, the actual concept of coercive control can be useful to us as well, when we’re talking about what forced marriage is, what honour based violence is. So when we’re actually looking at what exactly, you know, amounts to a forced marriage or an honour based violence. Coercive control lies at the heart, actually, it lies at the heart of all forms of violence against women and girls, you know, there may be various degrees or that may play out in different ways. There may be different factors involved, but it lies in the, at the heart of all forms of violence against women and girls. So coercive control, the language of coercive control can aid us in helping to improve and shape understanding of more culturally specific forms of harms too. So it’s useful. I just saw a a message saying what exactly is BME?
Pragna
I’m sorry, I’m using a shorthand, it’s Black and minority women. But really, so in a way, it’s that kind of very conflicting and contradictory relationship that we all have with the state. On the one hand, criminal laws are necessary, there is another debate to be had about, you know, is just throwing more laws at a problem, always the answer? But separately, insofar as criminal laws are also necessary, then we need to look at the ways in which the laws actually protect all women or groups of women, at the same time as safeguarding against the abuse of those laws by the state.
Jess
100%. That’s a great, a great point to end that on. And, and I want to come to you Marsha, because you spent a lot of time I think, four years from memory, you know, after the English laws were introduced, and there was momentum building to introduce similar laws in Scotland, you spend a lot of time working hand in hand with, with legislators, and with victim survivors to write legislation that you felt would safeguard against unforeseen consequences? What sort of things were you like looking ahead to try to head off at the pass in, in bringing in new, these new laws?
Marsha
Well, of course, I have to set the record straight a little bit, which is that we’d already been working on our coercive control.
Jess
Oh I’m sorry.
Marsha
For a number of years before that was fact, but it took us four years to get it right. Well, to get it better, I think, I guess there’s a couple things I would say about that. And, and it circles back to the Pragna’s, always more eloquent than I imagine to be, description of why coercive control has resonance, I think. But I guess one of the issues I really want, I was trying to think about how we could, I could be most helpful to the women in Australia, in this conversation, given our different settings. And one of the things that is really core to the, to the and it gets to what Pragna was saying about how coercive control is about patriarchy. And and and it reveals the mechanisms and the workings of patriarchy and women and children’s lives. And, and the, the issue for us was always that there’s a great phrase that has been, is now on the Istanbul Convention that came out of a, from Liz Kelly’s a wonderful researcher and in England, which is that, that violence against women, domestic abuse, is a cause and consequence of women’s inequality.
Marsha
And that phrase, and you can flip it around, you know, women’s inequality is a cause and consequence of violence against women, is, has been the sort of foundation the, you know, the bricks and mortar of our understanding of domestic abuse, of sexual assault, of all the different forms of violence against women in Scotland. But we really didn’t do, we under conceptualise how to what that looks like in practice, and coercive control helps us draw, you know, pull the curtains on the stage, that is patriarchy and women’s life. It reveals the, the sexism and the racism that’s endemic in the ways that our institutions treat women and the way that our laws are framed.
Marsha
So you can’t understand coercive control, unless you can understand that women are absolutely much more likely to be poor, to, to have a significant unpaid work in their lives and carrying responsibilities to be held responsible for parenting and for all of the things that happen to children in the family.And responsible for the abuser’s behaviour. So you know, and not to be at the tables of power when decisions are made about resources. About who benefits from tax policy. About who gets to have housing. About all of those things. And, and coercive control reveals how all of those things work, and explains why women are generally, you know, there’s no evidence that women commit coercive control in any significant numbers, they don’t have the tools to do that.
Marsha
And so I think what’s so critical, and I would say Pragna that I absolutely agree that coercive control is an element through everything. But when you look at the murders of women, for instance, they all have these elements of women’s constrained choices. The spaces for action, are constrained by the patriarchy, by the sexism, the racism in their lives, and the ableism and everything else. So coercive control was a, was a nice little package, but essentially, it was the experience of patriarchy that we could start to talk about in ways that we hadn’t before. And I think the thing that we succeeded at to, in some degree in Scotland and I have to say, I stand on the, on the shoulders of 40 years of women talking about this. So this is not a new thing. I think every woman in the women’s sector would say, well, you know, this was not a surprise to us. But I would say that, that one of the things that we were able to do was to work with a, with a pretty receptive Scottish Government, in terms of developing a law in an iterative process with survivors.
Marsha
So the language of the Scottish law is enormously different from any law that we’ve had before. And there’s copious amounts of guidance notes that are actually many of the phrases in there are taken from women and children’s accounts of what happened to them, and of what they want to see in a law that honors their experience. So that’s one of the things. The other thing is I’m just so mindful, you know, founding member of [inaudible 0:25:55] here. So mindful of the international research that says, when you change arrest policy in any country that we know of, one of the unintended negative side effects of that is that we see arrests of women who are actually victims go up. So I was really worried.
Marsha
Already, arrests were way too high already, as far as I was concerned, they were running between 13 and 15%, of all domestic abuse offences. And before we had the coercive control, and I thought, Oh, my God, this is, I’m trying not to swear. But this is a, you know, this is a blank show coming towards us if we don’t try and hit it off. So, so one of the things is we started using the phrase miscarriage of justice, to describe mistaken arrests of women who are really victims as perpetrators. And what we said was, this is, this is what we expect to happen unless everybody is vigilant. And now, we don’t have any evidence that it was that that kept the arrest to be around 5%, rather than the 15%. We were seeing previous to this, but I think it’s a really good, it’s a good strategy. Try it.
Marsha
Do you know what I mean, but, um, so, you know, our, you know, 40 years of women telling us that it was the constrained choices, the Liberty crime that Evan has spoken so, Evan Stark has spoken so eloquently about, and the, the, the emotional and, and sexual abuse that women live with, who are living with domestic abuse, that, that that’s the trauma, that’s the long term stuff. That’s the stuff that’s so hard to recover from. And, and yet we we were sort of complicit in having laws that actually ignored all of that experience. And so the, the challenge of creating laws that, that reflected what women and children were telling us, was enormous. But the, the status quo as you know, I’ve said over and over was unacceptable. Do you know what I mean? So absolutely, we were knew that we knew they were dangerous and creating a new law, but the biggest danger was doing nothing.
Jess
Yeah. And and I think just to pick you up in your point before, it sounds like and this is what I and others have suspected. Is that in in looking at it through a coercive control lens, that you’re actually far less likely to misidentify the victim as the perpetrator. Is that what you’re seeing in the data?
Marsha
Well, it’s interesting, cause that one of the things that was raised a lot here, as we were creating and passing this law, was that, um, there were a lot of people that were saying. Well, two things, either a, you’ll never prove it, because it’s so ephemeral. Do you know what I mean. It’s actually very concrete and very empirical, you know, but, oh, you’ll never prove it, or it’ll be so misused. And, you know, people have the right to be afraid of that, because it happens all the time. Do you know what I mean, you know, of women being uh, you know, calling the police and saying, I’m a, you know, I’m afraid for my life or I’m this or I’m that and winding up, getting hauled away. So and sometimes with their, their children left with their abuser. So it’s right to be worried about that.
Marsha
And it’s right that Black woman should be more worried about it. Do you know what I mean? Because when you have sexism and racism in the, in the mix, and Giri will tell you, we were talking just the other day about how much worse it all is when the abusers white, and the woman is not. So you know, I think, you know, don’t ignore any of those concerns. But our experience so far is that like I said that women are less likely to be miss identified in a miscarriage of justice as a perpetrator when they’re a victim.
Jess
Well, Giri, that sort of brings me to you and to ask you in your work at Shakti Women’s Aid, first of all, when this was being discussed, and, and and all of these concerns were being worked through over those many years, what were your concerns for the women that you work for and with and, and have any of them come to pass? What are you, are the women you work with safer now? Or or what are you seeing now as a result of these laws?
Girijamba
I want to raise two main points. I agree with what Pragna and Marsha’s saying from, as a service provider, we were really like happy when the coercive control legislation came. And we were also involved in the first domestic violence strategy in 2000. What actually, we are disappointed is that in the definition, if you’re thinking about providing the service to BME women, and when you’re talking about coercive control, what Pragna said is coercive control is the centre of all violence against women. And we acknowledge all forms of violence against women, including forced marriage, FCM, honour based violence.
Girijamba
But in the definition, when it comes to perpetrators, it stops at ex partners and partners, which is a problem for us. And I’ll tell you why. In most forced marriage FGM cases, it’s not the ex partner or the partner that is involved. It’s only after the marriage, intimate relationship where I, whether the man is forced into marrying, or the woman is forced into marrying, it’s the woman who is abused. And that’s the only case where in a forced marriage case, you’ll find a partner or an ex partner. But in most cases, the violence happens before the marriage. And the perpetrators are not always partner or ex partner. As a result of that, if the criteria is that for the perpetrators, what happens is when you seek support, and if the agency that is providing a service doesn’t acknowledge the family members as perpetrators, then the woman is denied that support. But that is something that you need to think when you’re developing your legislation. If you want to be an inclusive state, then you have to really be an inclusive state and look outside the box.
Girijamba
And I don’t take when people say it’s impossible, nothing is impossible. Bringing the coercive control legislation, we thought impossible 20 years ago, but it happened. No many things are happening. But then there’s the, there’s an argument about that, you know, if you say, extend, like family members, what will you do if a mother is abused by a son, but these are the things, it’s for the legislature, legislators and people like us to have a very strong framework to differentiate like, what is honour based violence. Even a mom who has been abused by a son that could be honour based violence, maybe the mom breached some honour code, you don’t know? It’s not always because you don’t like your parents or, you know, your wife doesn’t like your mom, so you’re gonna have to go out, it’s not always that. So we have to consider this. For us that, that has been our struggle. It has been my struggle. Since I’ve started at Shakti. That was 23 years ago. I, you know, in 1999 2000, that’s when, for me, it was important. And we’re still there. Not everybody accepts the family abuse. Same with FGM as well. FGM doesn’t happen in an intimate relationship. It happens by family members and your community, your tribe. You know, the second point I want to make is I know we don’t have time, is from the service services perspective, what we found Marsha already said. What we realised is when the abuser is a white person, and the woman is from BME, when the police are called it’s the woman who is, there were cases where woman is the one who has been arrested and not the man. And we have seen the, you know, the bias thing.
Girijamba
So when you’re making legislation, you have to take into consideration not just equality of women, equality of women from all races. I think that’s something we forget when we talk about equality of women. In our heads, they have like for Scotland, Scottish women, English, English women. It’s not that you’re, we’re talking about we sisters are behind you. We’re working with you. So there’s no, you know, for us, it’s frustration. You know, you work so hard, and then at the end product is not the thing. And another, third point I want to make is whenever you push for legislation, you also have to push for the support. The board should go in hand in hand. You know, you can’t have a legislation when there is no support for the women who leave.
Jess
Yes.
Girijamba
The people who leave homes, and then you’re saying, we can only support you for six months, you can only get you know this. And the final point is, I’m rushing I can talk for an hour.
Jess
That’s okay Giri.
Girijamba
I just want to raise the main points. Just to give you an idea. The final point is, when all this legislation come, what happens is we forget about the [inaudible 0:35:49] funds women, and I spoke to Maria, just before about the situation in Australia, that again, is the same, okay, all the legislations have come, you say all women in our country have equal rights and all. But when you leave, and then you say, I have no recourse to public funds stamped on my passport, then you’re saying there’s no accommodation.
Jess
Yeah. [Crosstalk 0:36:16 – 0:36:19].
Girijamba
But that’s something for y’all to think about? You know, that’s what I think, you know, it’s good, because you just started, so you have time to input all these things, and and then please take them to the end. You know, don’t leave any of these points behind, then the installation will be incomplete.
Pragna
I just, I’d love to come back to that later. So I want to pick up on some of the things Giri said.
Jess
Okay, fantastic.
Pragna
I’m aware that you want to also bring Melanie in. But you know, if we can come back, yeah.
Jess
I do.
Girijamba
I’m looking at the time, and I want to keep it brief.
Jess
It’s okay nobody’s [crosstalk: 0:36:58].
Girijamba
These are the main points. These are the main points. And when you think about coercive control or any kind of legislation, you also have to think about the, the races that you’re supporting, and what it means for them domestic abuse.
Jess
Absolutely. And so, so critical to define it in those cultural contexts. I know in Australia, South Asian women, I think, are the second highest group of callers to family violence helpline nationally.
Jess
You know,we have a very, very big expat. Well, a very big migrant population in Australia, with that background, and a lot of that, as you say, dowry abuse, forced marriage, FGM is a massive background issue, background, foreground issue for a lot of the women and, and kids who are being subjected to coercive control in Australia. So Pragna, we will come back to that. I just wanted to come to Melani, and just, you know, you’ve, you’ve had a, quite a unique position in this because you not only were you subjected to domestic abuse yourself, but you were working in the police force. And, and you have subsequently designed the training for police. And so I’m wondering what what was it like for you being subject to behaviours that fell outside of the law while you were actually responsible for enforcing the law?
Melani
Yeah, it was tricky. It was tricky. So and just before I go into that, I just really want to pick up Giri’s point around the legislation in Scotland being just around intimate partners. Well, in England and Wales, the the legislation does include family members. So you know, I’d say in terms of Australia, for your lawmakers, you know, look at all the versions of it across the UK and any other countries to see, you know, which parts were missed out, which parts were added. And, you know, for instance, within the Scottish law, the aggravation of the offence for when a child was involved, that wasn’t in the, you know, so the England and Wales version of the the offence.
Melani
So looking at both and seeing what the benefits of both are is really important for you as an, as a country starting off really, that’s the first thing. I just wanted to pick that up. And I would say, you know, learn from the lessons of the UK, both Scotland and England and Wales, learn from those lessons, you’ve got the benefit of our, our hindsight as it were. So that’s important in terms of my experiences, obviously, back when I was in an abusive situation, I was a police officer and it was very difficult to talk about that to your colleagues for fear of, you know, what you might be judged as unable to complete your work as a police officer.
Melani
My experience since then, has been, you know, and I do quite a bit of work now, with, with and around “DA Matters,” which is the change program, I wrote well on secondment to the college. I do quite a lot of work with survivors who were, and who still are police officers. And one of the things that we find consistently is that police officers who are experiencing particularly coercive controlling behaviour at home, that they overachieve, in actual fact, and they work incredibly hard at being a great cop, or, or a great call taker. And actually, their desire to make it better for, for others around them who are experiencing it, not just their colleagues, but actually, you know, outside the members of the public, is huge.
Melani
And repeatedly, I’m finding that when we’re going into police services, the amount of police officers who are identifying themselves as having experienced coercive control, and their desire to get it right, having experienced it themselves. And that’s very much how I feel that having experienced it, you know, I was gonna make, I was gonna use this, what happened to me in a really positive way. And I was given the opportunity to do that. Because when the law came in, in the, in England and Wales, in 2015, I was seconded to the College of Policing to look at what law, sorry, what training we needed for our frontline cops, that would help them to implement the coercive control and behaviour legislation.
Melani
And I was able to use my experience and other experiences and frontline services, their experiences, from their survivors, to make sure that we, that we trained our frontline police officers to recognise coercive control in the situations they are called into. How, you know, to recognise coercive control when the call taker picks up the phone. And there’s someone on the end saying, I need the police, you know. To recognise that to unpick it, to ask the right questions. You know, because in the past, police officers, for all other crime have been trained to ask what’s happened, you know, what’s, what, where are the injuries? What’s he done? And you know, those those kind of questions, although great with with, you know, physical violence, actually to to disclose coercively controlling behaviour, in response to a question that says what’s happened is incredibly difficult.
Melani
So actually, yeah, we had to, and this is what “DA Matters” does in the responders training, is that we retrain them. Yes, ask those questions about, you know, how, you know, what’s happened? Where are the injuries, all of that, that they generally ask? But let’s ask those questions that are gonna help someone to say well actually, I have to do 10 hours of housework every day. And if I don’t, I’m terrified, he’ll harm my children. Now, let’s find the questions. So we train them to do that we, you know, we train them to ask completely different questions about it. And, you know, when we talk about, you know, what are you gonna ask if to find out around coercive control, you know, they come up with some great ideas, you know.
Melani
One of the youngest police officers, you know, we’ve trained, he knew in the job, he said, “Well, I think I just asked, what’s the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning?” You know, because actually, that is, if if, you know, from my experience, if you’re in a coercive controlling relationship, the first thing that happens when you wake up in the morning is “What mood’s he in, what’s [inaudible 0:43:47] today be like, now.”
Jess
I asked a survivor. I mean, having spoken to you before I actually asked a victim survivor the other day in an interview, just to get her to isolate what’s happened to her in 25 years. I said, “What did you think about when you woke up in the morning?” And she said, “Well, the first thing I thought was how tired I was because he would wake me up between one and five, and keep me awake every night.” You know, and I thought, if you had a police officer asked that question, she wouldn’t think to tell them that he was, that would seem a really private thing that has happened. And yet it goes to that inducing debility and exhaustion part of coercive control, and depriving them of sleep is a key part of evidence.
Melani
Absolutely. And I think, you know, the other thing that’s really important when you’re trying to train police officers around an offence, like coercive controlling behavior, is you have to not just get them to focus on the survivor, but focus on the perpetrator. How is this person when they approach the police, you know, are they first to the door? Are they the first person to say, “Oh, she’s in the back there, mate, you better go and check cos she’s, she’s a bit, you know, mental and a bit drunk.” You know, is that what they say to you at the door? And if they’re saying that to you at the door, what are they trying to achieve with you? Are they trying to align themselves to you to isolate this, this person who is actually their victim.
Melani
So you know that grooming of professionals, training police officers in and recognising themselves being groomed and controlled by somebody who is a abuser, who is coercively controlling in a relationship. You know, once you start to, to help officers to pick up those signs of grooming, and of kind of aligning themselves, because that’s what, particularly for male police officers, they will often be approached by those perpetrators to align themselves, because then it’s easier for them to see that the victim is actually the perpetrator. And that’s, that’s a part of their, their, the way that they manage their life generally. So police officers get groomed into that. So recognising that becomes really, really very important.
Jess
And lastly, with you Mel, how, how are police responding to this training? Are they receptive? Are you finding that when they go to these call outs that they are able to actually take this training on it and use it and collect the evidence they need to find?
Melani
Absolutely. Yeah, we are, the research is telling us, our the independent research is telling us there’s a 41% increase in arrest for coercive controlling behaviour. We know in Scotland that in the first year 1700, recorded crimes of coercive controlling behaviour were present. We know from our six month follow up evaluations with the officers and staff themselves, they are saying things like, I used my coercive controlling behaviour question and I, the person told me all of this, and I would never have known that. And, you know, they are saying about themselves that, you know, this is quite a phenomenon for police officers.
Melani
Often police officers will, will find it difficult because they are often grow up within a blame culture within the organisation. And it’s quite difficult for police officers to say, actually, I didn’t know something, but now I do. And this is how I’m using it. So for them six months later for us repeatedly when we go into these forces and remember in in across the UK, including Scotland, we’ve been in 24 Police Services now and delivered “DA Matters,” you know, for them to then say six months later, I really didn’t know what I was doing every time I went to a domestic abuse incident around coercive control.
Melani
And now I do and now I’m, I’m picking it up, I can, I can sniff it out now. I can, I can see it. I know that I need to speak to the parents of somebody. I know I need to speak to their work colleagues, I know I need to speak, you know to look, look carefully at the house. I know I need to do a search. When I go into the house, I need to look at the house, I need to look in the bathroom, I need to look at the children, I need to carefully unpick what’s going on in this home and look for that pattern of coercive control every time.
Melani
And so for officers six months later to be saying I learned something and I’m doing it differently. That’s a big deal. You know, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. So for me in Australia, if you’re going to go down the route of this legislation, and, and the panelists are absolutely right around, don’t ignore the worries that are there about any new legislation, because that’s really important. But, but whatever you do, don’t go down the route of legislation without proper training. And I don’t mean training of specialists, I mean, training of frontline cops, the person that answers the call, the person that picks, picks that phone up, the one that first goes to the front counter of a police station, the one that gets out of the car and goes to the house. Those are the people that need to get this right, because that’s where it will go wrong, not the specialists who are usually passionate and do their own work and learning. Those frontline, those frontline people.
Jess
Couldn’t agree more. Um Pragna. We, just to come back to you briefly before we go to a couple of questions. What, what were you wanting to add to Giri’s comments?
Pragna
Well, actually, I just wanted to add a number of things in terms of the if you’re looking at the Australian model. One is, one is Melanie’s absolutely right. Don’t go into this without looking at training, I would say don’t go into this without looking at resourcing. Because I think that one of the dangers of any kind of attempts to create new laws is that they’re always resource neutral. You know, I am actually a little bit tired now of the government’s themselves throwing laws at us without actually ensuring that there are resources to back it up. So there is no point in rescuing women from coercive controlling relationships if they have nowhere to go. So you know, and there are no proper refuges and proper resource refuges, no proper safe accommodation, no access to benefits, no access to legal aid.
Pragna
I mean, and I think that what we are all of us guilty of looking at the first bit of the problem, but not the rest of it. So we kind of, I always feel like we actually need to start thinking about laws that look at the need for resources. Because you know, you’re never going to implement this and encourage women to report unless the resources were available. And that comes back to the point that Giri was making. And I just wanted to highlight two things. I think she’s absolutely right. The, the concept of intimate partner violence is a paradigm that excludes BME women, because it does not recognise the forms of violence that they experience.
Pragna
And it’s the paradigm itself is very Eurocentric, I feel. And it’s not that honour-based violence, forced marriage, and all these cultural specific forms of harm, are not intimate partner violence. They are, but they are often experienced in a context that involves a slightly more, collusion of other family members. So it’s not easy to either classify them all as family violence, or and outside of intimate partner violence. They are parts of intimate partner violence. And I think that the question then for us is how we define intimate partner violence. And you know, reframe that whole concept to include the ways in which there are socially different contexts and the way in which violence is experienced, even in different partner violences experience.
Pragna
And for many BME women, it’s multiple perpetrators at the same time. At the heart of it lies your intimate partner, you know, partner perpetrating the violence, but the collusion of wider extended family members and communities. So I really support Giri’s point, there. The other point I want to make is that the state itself creates conditions that allow coercive control to flourish. And again, by doing that, it then leaves a number of particularly BME women outside of state protection. So she referred to the issue of migrant women who have no recourse to public funds. That basically means that no matter what their situation, if they have insecure status, they’re not allowed to access the welfare safety net that’s available to abuse women. So what that means is that the government’s created the immigration laws that is conducive to coercive control. And perpetrators then use the immigration laws to maintain coercive control over women.
Pragna
This is a central paradox. And this is something that, you know, as feminists we have to grapple with, because one arm of the state might be saying it’s all, you know, the rhetoric of protection. And yet the same arm of that state may be excluding people and aiding other arms of the state that’s dealing with issues around you know, anti immigration, creating a hostile environment for immigration and so on. And despite the fact that many of us have campaigned for better protection for migrant women, the state continuously refuses to listen. So I think you know, those kinds of contradictions and challenges are a problem for us.
Jess
[Crosstalk 0:52:54 – 0:52:47].
Pragna
But the issue isn’t to vacate the space, the state or the law are sites of empowerment, but just be vigilant about both seeking empowerment, both seeking protection, whilst at the same time challenging abuses that the state itself perpetrates or that the policies that the state creates that’s conducive to coercive control. And the last point I want to make is that I think there is a danger and we’ve seen it, I certainly feel in the UK, we are de-gendering coercive control. So you know, whereas it perhaps is a useful dynamic to explain that wheel of power and control that we’ve all grown up understanding and using to talk about abuse. We are in danger of coercive, fetishising coercive control, and using it in a way that strips it of the patriarchal gender inequality underpinnings. And so I think we have to be careful. So these are some of the things that I think that are useful for you to think about. As you look towards your, you know, how you want to frame if you want to frame a law around coercive control.
Jess
And I think the issues that you’ve talked about there have totally applicable to Australia. We have the same thing with temporary visas. And then the lack of government services for women in those situations, and certainly there’ve been inquiries that have recommended fixing that. And the government is still, as far as I know yet to respond to those. I want to quickly go to some questions, and we may just go slightly over 8 o’clock. I’ll, I’ll ask Maria to let me know if that’s actually possible on the chat. Just if you’re able to hang around for a few minutes after that would be great. And if not, feel free to go. I wonder the first question that came through quite early. And this is a question that’s alive in Australia. And it’s certainly, it’s, it’s certainly tied to, you know, longtime thoughts around abolition, but also the sort of defund the police movement coming through the Black Lives Matter. And that’s, that’s been a movement that’s been very strong here in Australia, too. Are there alternatives to criminalisation? Is criminalising coercive control actually the best way to do this? Do we want police to have more power when we know that they themselves are often perpetrators of abuse? Is what the questioner is asking.
Pragna
Well, that’s an, that’s a very, very long debate to be had. I think we certainly want the police to do their job in protecting the vulnerable in our society. That is a function of the police, its function of the state. And that protection will also involve the state, enforcing the law, which involves state coercion, and for good, for good in the sense of protection. I’m not a one for saying that, you know, at the moment, we can abolish police, we can abolish prisons, because we have to keep women safe, we have to keep children safe. And we don’t have alternatives.
Pragna
And I am very worried that the the danger of that argument, that doesn’t say that we shouldn’t do with the abuses of the state in terms of over policing, that goes on, particularly towards minority groups. But what I am saying is that, you know, as feminists, we have, we have always demanded that the private violence is a matter of public concern. Though it is not just a question of private, you know, keeping things behind the doors and resolving things internally, it is about state obligations to protect.
Pragna
So to that extent, we need mechanisms that do protect and prisons, and the functions of the police are part of that. And I’ve talked about the dangers of not being vigilant to the ways in which that power can be also abused. But I am worried that we don’t focus entirely on just creating laws, but we look at other ways in which women also have to be kept safe. And that is what I meant when I said, you know, you cannot make these laws resource neutral, because it’s keeping women safe is also about the alternatives, creating infrastructures that actually keep women safe access to childcare, access to welfare benefits, access to refuges, you know, and all those things that matter that infrastructure matters.
Pragna
As far as BME women is concerned, I am extremely worried that if we go down the route, the state is not the solution, then the alternative is community forms of mediation. And my fear is that, particularly BME women are already, even before they report to outside agencies are almost put under pressure, by family by community to go through internal forms, community forms, religious forms of arbitration and mediation, they are almost always patriarchal. They are almost always detrimental to women’s rights and safety. And do not listen and believe women. So alternative community forms of mediation may actually be worse.
Pragna
And we do not want to see return to vigilante or mob law either, which will always always work against women’s interests, too. So we don’t have, we don’t have an alternative to the need to make demands of the state. But I think we do have to look at alternative infrastructures that are necessary to make these laws work. And I do think that we have to look at accountability measures to ensure that the state doesn’t overreach and abuse its own powers.
Jess
Well, that’s, that’s a hell of an answer to that question. Does anyone have anything to add to that?
Marsha
I’d be, I’d just like to say, that’s why you have Pragna to speak to these things because she does a beautiful job of presenting it. I would just like to add that I think one of the things that I find myself doing so much these days is trying to get people to, to not, not default to binaries. It’s, the problem here is sexism and racism in our institutions, and our community, and in our families, and in our workplaces. And in all of these places, and, and the those are the problems that we have to deal with. And we have multiple tools, some of which don’t work very well. And some of which may work better if we have the infrastructure and the, you know, the framing around them.
Marsha
But I think what we really want to avoid is having to choose between some women’s safety over other women’s safety or from having to say, some, we’re not going to take these resources, because there’s not enough of these resources. So it really is about naming the problem and saying, Is this something that will help with the problem? And, and in the context of policing? You know, I often say, and I absolutely mean it to my, at the bottom of my heart, which is that I think Scotland has some of the best policing on domestic abuse in the world. And I still think it is so far from good enough, I can’t tell you, and that the experiences that we hear on the ground are absolutely a different, you know, in a different universe, then what gets reported in official reports from police, and from prosecutors and from from court.
Marsha
So what we can never ignore is the importance of the feedback loops between women’s experience on the ground and in our services and our services all around Scotland, in all the services around Women’s Aid, including Northern Ireland, which gets left out of this conversation quite a bit. And that we have to create systems that protect those feedback loops. And that require, for instance, that the Scottish Parliament review after three years of implementation, what are the outcomes for this law? Have you accomplished what you said you wanted to accomplish? But we, I think we so need to move away from this notion somehow that it’s an either or situation? Because that’s when we wind up with the status quo winning the argument yet again?
Jess
Yeah. I think another question I wanted to address to you all is, is what, what kind of evidence and this is coming from one of the questions on the Q&A, what kind of evidence are police collecting and are cases actually being successfully prosecuted and are offenders receiving significant sentences or whatever that may be? Whether it’s diversionary programs or sentences, or they’re getting just a slap on the wrist?
Melani
I hopefully, I might be able to answer a little bit about that, you know, without the kind of data around the successful prosecutions. The training very much centres on, you know, looking for evidence of coercive control is not the same as looking for evidence of a physical assault or criminal damage. And to you know, we are very keen for them to make sure they’re looking at somebody’s car, somebody’s phone, somebody’s bank accounts, somebody’s bathroom, you know, those are, they are all good ways that officers can do their, their evidence gathering for coercive controlling behaviour. And you do have to retrain police officers to do that for this, this legislation.
Melani
And, you know, the fear very much when we first started with coercive controlling behaviour was about, well, how do we get the evidence? Well, the thing about coercive controlling behaviour is that the evidence is everywhere. Because the coercive controlling behaviour is everywhere in a relationship, every aspect of a relationship will be controlled, you only have to go into a woman’s handbag, and look at the shopping lists, and look at what’s on that shopping list. You only have to go into their phone with their permission, of course, and look at the text messages. You only have to go to their work colleagues, and ask them about who, you know, what it’s like working with this person.
Melani
Somebody who’s a, you know, a woman who’s being coercively controlled, will be acting differently at work in some aspects. Rachel Williams, one of our pioneers, who was coercively controlled for a long time. One of the things that, that we use within the training is a letter that was written by her employer to authorities around their experience of working with Rachel when before she was attacked while she was in that coercive controlling relationship.
Melani
And it talks about, you know, we were aware that she was not allowed to cut men’s hair. We were aware that she was not allowed to colour her own hair. We, you know, we were aware, we were aware, we were aware, constantly, you know, there are lots of signs just in one workplace. So this idea that coercive controlling behaviour is difficult to, to evidence because it’s hidden, it’s nonsense. It’s not hidden, it’s very apparent because it’s in every aspect of the relationship. It’s about looking through the right lens. And you can train people to look through the right lens.
Marsha
Can I just come in to say that we had a prosecutor say to me early in the implementation period of the a new law here, which was a he loves this new law, because it, it’s exactly what Melanie was saying, which is that there’s so much more evidence, and that, and that it, and at least the framing of it in Scotland, allows the court to lead evidence to bring evidence into the case. Much more evidence that actually demonstrates how the relationship operates, rather than isolated incidents, which is, of course, how the criminal justice system has always framed domestic abuse for for decades.
Marsha
But, but actually, what is the context of the whole relationship, and he said that not only did it mean that he had more evidence, but it also meant that he could ask for a higher tariff. And, and, of course, our, our, our the new law, put a ceiling on the you know, raised the ceiling for what the sentences could be. I’m still not happy with sentencing, really unhappy with it, actually, in general. So I’m not saying that it fixed it. But I’m just saying that there is the potential for better, more evidence and higher tariffs.
Melani
I think there’s something there isn’t there, sorry, about, you know, this idea that if there’s lots lots of evidence, it’s difficult to find. And that’s really upside down, isn’t it? Because if you think about a one off offence of, you know, a punch to the face, you know, a defence barrister can get into that, and can look at self defence, they can look at, you know, that whole thing around, you know, was I doing it to stop somebody getting to my victim getting to me, there’s loads of things that a defence barrister can really get into, and tackle and really go for. When you’ve got a whole pattern, a whole relationship that has got all these different parts to it and has longevity, that’s much more difficult to defend, because you’re not just defending one, a one incident, you’re defending all these different things. And you’re building a pattern, you know, a good prosecutor, will, and good police evidence gathering, you know, this offence is not difficult to prosecute. It really isn’t. It’s a fallacy when people talk about that. It’s, it’s fear, that’s unfounded.
Pragna
I think it can be difficult, because I think that, you know, it depends on some, some women are very good at ensuring that they are talking to others about even if they don’t do anything about what’s going on in their lives, other women don’t. Some women may jot down and have texts and things, other women don’t. So I think it can be difficult. I think one of the things for me is that police officers, certainly from my experience, don’t do enough to interrogate when women report, and there is a serious issue here, because that is why we are seeing women being arrested instead of the perpetrators.
Pragna
Is because what happens in our experience, and it’s still happening, regardless of the, you know, criminal, regardless of coercive control being in law, what we’re seeing happening and is more and more women are getting arrested when they report domestic abuse, because counter allegations are made. So the perpetrator will say, “Well, actually, she hit me or she did this to me.” And instead of the police, therefore interrogating both the allegations and looking at, you know, the contexts in which these things are taking place, they just take at face value what’s said and arrest both and, and often arrest women, particularly.
Pragna
So I think the more has to be done even if the evidence, objective evidence isn’t there, to get a proper account from women detailed account from women because they can, if you interrogate that history of abuse, you can identify that whole pattern of coercive control. And that statement and account itself can be very, very important and significant. The other aspect is the impact of all of that on women’s lives. That evidence can be very useful. We’ve seen it in some homicide cases where women have used coercive control to explain the impact of their, where they have killed abusive partners. The Sally Challen case in this country being an obvious example. So I think the impact of the coercive control and women, the trauma that they go through, the depression that they often experience, that also needs to be better identified and sort for as part of that evidence gathering.
Girijamba
I just want to say two things. One is majority of the women don’t even realise that coercive control is happening to them, because it becomes like a part and parcel of their everyday life. Because that’s what you’re told is okay. And the second thing is when it comes to counter allegations, and if the pair, the family are living with joint family system, in a joint family system with other family members, when the counter allegations are done, what happens is the men get support, and not the women.
Girijamba
So the women have no evidence to show whereas the man, man he has evidence to show. That’s something again, for whoever is investigating a police, just to know that, you know, yes, you know, what is happening, the man seems to, you know, the family, other family members are supporting the man, but women have no evidence to show and most cases for us, they fail there, you know, not doing proper investigation or not understanding the family dynamics, and how it works. Again, the system fails.
Jess
Yeah. And that’s why again, it’s so important to understand the role of those extended families. And I’d say I mean, obviously, in England, and Wales and Scotland, there are, there are different situations going on, although I think all of these elements are present, you know, in different ways. It was interesting talking to the specialist DV prosecutor in Scotland a little while ago, who said that, as of March last year, of course, when COVID hit, there hasn’t been a lot of data gathering since. But as of March last year, that they found that of the cases that got prosecuted, which I think was about 96% of charges from memory, Marsha, that there were as a conviction rate of 81%.
Jess
And that was compared to an 83% conviction rate for the previous offence of physical, physical offences. And what was interesting is that in cases where there was the evidence, and where the, and where that evidence gathering was done well, that they were actually, she was actually finding that majority of cases, the evidence was so conclusive, they didn’t even need to go to trial, that the, the offenders were pleading guilty. So I think it’s, you know, I wish we had more time to really dig down into the weeds of why, whether it’s down to particular legislation, whether it’s down to particular, police, you know, in terms of why things are happening differently for different victims, and different offenders.
Jess
But at the moment, you know, in lieu of like, you’ve got to get your people in your country to do these assessments, so we can use all the evidence that you’ve gathered, so we can get a clear sense of it. But I think that where we’re getting a sense of how at least, how you can do this. If it’s, if it’s a road, we decide to go down in Australia. I think just lastly, and I will let you go in a few minutes. But, but one of the the questions that really has been voted up to the top, I mean there’s so many questions that I really apologise for not getting to all of them. But, you know, we talk a lot about this being a gendered crime. But of course, we know that coercive control happens in same sex relationships, too. And there’s a question here saying, is there any data on how coercive control laws are impacting queer relationships? And this question is asked particularly same sex female relationships?
Pragna
I’m not aware, I don’t know, Marsha? Sorry.
Marsha
Yeah, no, no, I was gonna say the, the sad answer, of course, is, even before the new law, there was really a paucity of, of research, especially in lesbian relationships. We know working with the gay and lesbian organisations in Scotland, that they have done some research in this, interesting evidence about coercive control in, in, in those relationships, but it’s gendered. Again, everything is gendered. So the way, the way it operates will, will be different because of the different dynamics of gender that are playing out in that relationship.
Marsha
I, I know that there’s been discussion, but I don’t think very much effective action at good data gathering. And of course, we have the whole issue now that’s it around equality monitoring of the implementation of the, of the law. And I’m going to predict I don’t have the evidence yet, but I’m going to predict that it’s crap. So I wish, I wish I could say that I had faith that we would have better and good and better evidence on all of this, but and especially, and we’re now embroiled in all the the gender recognition and gender critical stuff. So I doubt seriously this is, we’re gonna have any really good information anytime soon. And it’s a shame.
Jess
Before we go, just a last question, just if you could just address quite briefly, because I’m sure you all want to go and have breakfast. Is just do you think that introducing these laws have made a positive change? And have they increased women’s access to safety?
Marsha
Too early, too early.
Pragna
Yeah.
Marsha
You know, too early to tell.
Pragna
I absolutely agree. I think, I think what it has done is created a wider cultural awareness, Is, there is it, you know, a perceptible cultural shift in a way in which domestic abuse is understood, and that has to be a good thing. We’re now seeing that understanding, I’m hoping that it isn’t just limited to the criminal justice system, but that it actually percolates into the family justice system, where it’s urgently needed, and within other state institutions, you know, where they interface with women who face violence and abuse or other vulnerable adults who face violence and abuse.
Pragna
So I think culturally, I think we’re seeing a shift. Not enough of a shift, but a shift. And you know, the biggest signifier of that is we had a popular Radio 4 “Archers,” you know, program, I never watch it, but I hear it, but lots of people listen in, and for a year or more of the storyline was coercive control. And I think it opened a lot of people’s eyes as to how patriarchal control is maintained and perpetuated. Within, you know, relationships. Has it saved women? It’s too early, I agree with Marsha. And I said, I doubt any law can do that. It requires political will, at the end of the day to do that. And we still have too many gaps in a way in which the state itself responds to the protection of women, ignores some women altogether, criminalises others. Implementation is still too inconsistent. Implementation remains, for me, is the key issue, actually, it’s still too patchy, it’s still uneven and difficult to maintain some kind of high standards across the board. So that’s too early. And I doubt if we can talk about, you know, saving women without all the other things being, also, being put into place. So I wouldn’t put all my eggs into the criminal justice basket. Having said that, I think that having the law has helped to create wider cultural shifts and awareness. And that’s not a bad thing.
Melani
Yeah, I think I would really agree that I think there’s something you know, you know, when we’re training police, police officers, we’re very much about resetting, the empathy and the compassion around domestic abuse in general. And, and in particular, you know, sort of changing the mindset. And I think if you can do that in, in those big statutory organisations, around, you know, empathy levels and understanding, then that does filter down into the, the general public and you’re in terms of the “Archers,” we’ve also had television programs, you know, “EastEnders” and “Coronation Street,” and all of those that are now showing these kind of, obviously, and acted relationships, and they’re doing it really well.
Melani
And it, you know, for me, the research that goes into those programs is talking to, you know, those researchers are talking to survivors, they are talking to the people who understand about domestic abuse, and in particular coercive controlling behaviour, because they’re getting some of that inaction really well. You know, they’re, it’s demonstrating it to, to the outside world. And certainly from from my point of view, I think resetting empathy and compassion around who, who victims and who survivors are in terms of domestic [inaudible 1:19:54] is really important. I think, we get, I think there’s a, I think there’s a glimmer for me. I feel we’re on that road to changing the way everybody thinks about it. I’m really hopeful about it.
Marsha
I think I am hopeful, too, I would just like to add, that it matters that women see and hear and children see and hear themselves in these discussions. And for the first time in decades, you know, that their experiences are beginning to be talked about. And it’s a bit, comes back to what Giri’s point is, which is, you know, that, that, you know, they, they see that, the that the criminal justice system is talking about experiences that are much more congruent with the things they are living with every day. And at the end of the day, does that make them safer? I don’t know. But I think it matters that our laws are linked with the real lives that women and children live.
Jess
Giri?
Girijamba
I agree with what Pragna and Marsha and Melani are saying, but I think having the legislation is kind of given your power, it’s the kind of or I’m not getting the word in, it’s now out there. But whether it is working, or how it will work is like it’s, it’s too early to say, we have to wait and see. But having it is good, because we can argue on it. And coercive control is acknowledged now. So there’s something to go on. Whereas previously, it’s not. And I think it’s respect. It’s showing respect to the survivors, that we do acknowledge what’s happening to. Yes, it happens, you know, previously, it wasn’t like, like Pragan said at the beginning, the definition, always emotional, psychological abuse was mentioned, but only physical abuse was the one that was focused on.
Pragna
I would say, though, that I would say that, as with any of these laws, as with any of these kinds of changes, this, this it’s the feminist struggle behind it, that matters. So you know, let’s keep that going. Cos as long as we keep that going, we can try and keep the state you know, on the right path, despite and try and sort of navigate the pitfalls that we’ve all talked about. But it is, ultimately, it is whether or not there is a feminist struggle behind all this, to keep everybody on their toes and keep everybody, you know, hold everybody to account.
Marsha
[Crosstalk 1:22:37 – 1:22:38] coercive control laws in the first place.
Pragna
Exactly.
Marsha
Is the is the women started around their kitchen tables, like every important social justice movement in the world. And, and that, that is why we’ve gotten as far as we have, and a big salute out to the women who aren’t here, whose shoulders we all stand on.
Jess
Absolutely. Thank you so much. That’s a beautiful note to end on. And I just cannot thank you all enough for your expertise, and your experience and your generosity. Thank you Melani Morgan, Girijamba Polubothu, Paraga Patel and Marsha Scott, and thank you to everyone who stayed even though we went 25 minutes over. And please join us next week when we look at the Australian context of coercive control. And we’re joined by seven people on that, and that lunchtime webinar, but thank you so much. I’ll let you all go and, and thank you also to the Victoria Women’s Trust, who have worked so hard to put this together. Thanks, everyone, and good night.
Pragna
Thank you and good luck.
Girijamba
Thank you.
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