As I type these words, I do so with a heavy heart; this will be my last column for PN. I would have written to and for you, PN readers, until the end of my days, but circumstances beyond my control are forcing me to step back.
Please know I do so with immense gratitude to every single one of you for reading my words over the past six years. I must also express my immense gratitude to my colleagues; Milan Rai, Emily Johns, Gabriel Carlyle, Emma Sangster and Claire Poyner.
I have learned from each of you, and I wish you all the greatest peace and happiness this human existence has to offer. I hope to see all of you, colleagues and readers, out there (in the real world and online) creating positive change for the good of all living beings.
Speaking of positive change, here’s something that sir Kid Starver (it seems he’s committed to the moniker now, after suspending seven Labour MPs who voted for the SNP’s proposal to scrap the two-child benefit cap) could and should do, as quickly as possible.
We need a national register of domestic abusers, and we need it yesterday. Attempts under the previous government were scuppered, but Mr Magnolia’s previous experience as director of public prosecutions should have taught him the importance of this becoming policy, and exactly why.
I will freely admit I have skin in this game, having survived not one, but three different abusers – two family members and a romantic partner. One of the worst things for me is the knowledge that at least two of them have had other victims, both before and after me, despite being reported. And that is a story we hear again and again in cases of abuse.
The Guardian reported on 16 August that, so far in 2024, 50 women and girls have been killed by men in the UK. On average, a woman is murdered by a man every three days here, with most of those murdered by current or former partners. A ‘striking’ number of those women had reported their abusers to the police for breaching protection orders.
We’re not even safe in our homes – according to the latest Femicide Census data, 74 percent of women were murdered at home, and 62 percent of the men had a history of violence against women. This brings me to my main point – violence is often part of a pattern of escalating behaviour with multiple victims.
On paper, in my lifetime, we Brits have made great strides towards taking real action against domestic and sexual violence; when I was small, it was still legal for a man to rape his wife. While that is no longer the case, only 2.6 percent of rape cases result in a charge.
Thanks in part to huge delays in the court system, 60 percent of victims are dropping out before trials start. Put another way, that is 98.96 percent of reported rapists never seeing the inside of a courtroom, never mind the inside of a prison cell. Labour pledged 80 new courts in their election manifesto to deal with the backlog, so we’ll see. However, that only deals with a tiny part of the problem.
Just four out of 100 sexual assaults reported at the Reading and Leeds music festivals resulted in prosecutions. Domestic Violence Prevention Orders are not worth the paper they are written on. There is a funding crisis in UK refuges. There is a huge shortage of practical support for male survivors, disabled survivors and LGBTQ+ survivors. The NHS crisis means there is little psychological support. Social stigma persists, and survivors are often met with disbelief, especially if our abusers are female-presenting people. There are violence prevention programmes, but they are hard to come by and of varying quality. Toxic masculinity is rife, particularly online.
In short, there is still so much work to do.
About five years ago, I got a private message on social media from a stranger. This unfortunate woman was the next partner of one of my abusers. Her words were eerily similar to my own traumatic memories, down to her questioning if she was the one truly culpable.
I’m not saying that a register of domestic abusers would have definitely saved her, or me, or any other person, from the things we have endured, but a quiet warning likely could not have hurt.
We deserve a warning if we cross paths with a violent individual, especially if that path leads to us being a potential future survivor. It’s not enough to simply react to abuse or violence, we must act to prevent it.