A long-awaited new criminal offence, advocated for by Centre for Women’s Justice and introduced as an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Act one year ago, finally comes into force today.
Campaigners for the new offence have highlighted how the terrifying experience of non-fatal strangulation is often trivialised within the criminal justice system. Police have treated it as a minor “common assault”, equivalent to a slap. The new offence provides greater powers to police and courts to address this form of abuse.
Women’s charities estimate that 20,000 women per year in the UK experience non-fatal strangulation or suffocation. It is also the second most common method of killing of women by men. Survivors describe how they honestly believed they were going to die. Not being able to breathe is a primal fear, used in ‘water-boarding’ which is recognised as a form of torture. Many women who are strangled during domestic violence lose consciousness, and the loss of oxygen to the brain can cause minor brain damage, memory loss and even stroke. Survivors describe strangulation as a tool of control in coercive relationships. Many women also report being pressurised or coerced into strangulation during sex.
Centre for Women’s Justice began lobbying Parliament to include this offence within the Domestic Abuse Act two years ago, based on our work with frontline domestic abuse services. A campaigning group including AAFDA, SUTDA, the Domestic Abuse and Victims’ Commissioners, pushed hard for a change in the law.
How will this offence be investigated? Some police officers believe that if there are no injuries to the neck then the case is ‘word on word’ and it cannot be taken forward. This is an error of law. Research in the US has found that 50% of cases leave no visible injuries, and that even some fatal cases of strangulation have no external marks to the neck, although there are internal injuries.[1] Survivors have described how their abusers know this is abuse they can ‘get away with’. However, training of frontline professionals can educate them on typical signs of strangulation, such as pinprick dots in the eyes, blurred vision, difficulty swallowing, and many others. Proper implementation of this offence can enable us to tackle it robustly.
Nogah Ofer, solicitor at Centre for Women’s Justice, said:
“Will the new offence be used by the police and prosecutors or will it just sit on the statute books like some of the other powers designed to tackle domestic abuse?
Police and prosecutors must be educated to understand this unique form of assault, to bring it into the light of day and treat it with the seriousness it deserves.”
Read Nogah Ofer’s blog here
[1] McClane, Strack & Hawley (2001) A review of 300 strangulation cases Parts II and III